


uncurling lifelines

by theputterer



Series: cassian andor nonsense [5]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Children of Characters, Communication, Depression, F/M, Family Dynamics, Flashbacks, Fluff, Future Fic, It's Going to Get HORRIFICALLY SAPPY, Mental Health Issues, Mother-Son Relationship, Recovery, Romance, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-03
Updated: 2017-10-13
Packaged: 2019-01-08 16:06:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 44,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12257676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theputterer/pseuds/theputterer
Summary: Jyn is bright. Cassian is melancholic.But this doesn't mean they're incompatible.It might even mean they're exactly what the other needs.Now that the end is not the end.[Or: a love story.]





	1. can you see the light?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Callioope](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callioope/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Tell me about Jyn."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Story title from "Various Storms & Saints" by Florence and the Machine, from HOW BIG HOW BLUE HOW BEAUTIFUL.
> 
> Chapter title from "3 Rounds and a Sound" by Blind Pilot, from 3 ROUNDS AND A SOUND.
> 
> Story for Callioope, who asked for the pre-Epilogue "growing back together" story of AMOR FATI. I have made an effort to make this story understandable/accessible for those who haven't read that monster.

**_10 ABY_ **

“Tell me about your wife.”

“Ex-wife,” Cassian says, automatically, and winces.

Duval blinks at him, a hint of an apology in his light brown eyes.

“Sorry,” Duval murmurs, and Cassian watches as he shuffles his papers around, _actual_ papers.

Here is Eranas Duval, a trauma counselor who eschews technology, preferring to record his sessions with paper and shorthand; it is the shorthand method of taking notes that Cassian finds most endearing, though the lack of technology in the room also adds to Cassian’s comfort, making him feel less paranoid and observed, and he knows this is a purposeful move by Duval. It isn’t a wrong one.

“I did know you were divorced, I just…” Duval sighs, looking over his notes from a previous session. “I’m sorry. It was a mistake.”

“It’s fine,” Cassian says.

“Do you ever call her your wife, still?”

“Um. No.”

“Really?”

“I am very aware we’re separated.”

Duval frowns. “Well, you are, but… You also aren’t, not quite. You’re wearing a ring.”

Cassian looks down, focusing for a moment on his hands, resting on his knees. His eyes catch on the heavy gold ring around his finger, the ring Duval undoubtedly took notice of during the start of this session, their first session since Cassian’s return from Sernpidal.

“It’s a family ring,” Cassian tells Duval, and this is the truth.

“Your family?”

“My mother’s family,” Cassian says. “She was from a family of successful potters on Sernpidal. The Cassianos, where I got my name from. This ring belonged to my grandfather.”

“I see. A family ring. Not a wedding ring.”

Cassian looks up at Duval, frowning. “Fest doesn’t have any traditions about wedding rings.”

Duval should be perfectly aware of this, too. He’s from Fest, like Cassian.

“No, but other systems do,” Duval explains. “I wondered if perhaps your… ex-wife, was from such a system.”

“She isn’t really from anywhere,” Cassian says, and this is also the truth, more or less. Jyn was born in a prison.

“What do you mean by that?”

Cassian shifts in his seat a little, somewhat uncomfortable with offering Jyn’s history to a man she has never met. “It’s not really my place to say.”

“Of course,” Duval says, and doesn’t press further. “You’re separated from your ex-wife, and you wear a family ring from your mother--”

“Jyn does, too,” Cassian interjects, because this seems relevant.

“Jyn… has a family ring?”

“From my mother’s family. I gave it to her.”

Duval sets his pen down, his expression interested. “Ah.”

Cassian gives in. “I understand why you’d… Why you think I might have a hard time remembering she’s my _ex_ -wife.”

“You both wear family rings, and she’s currently pregnant with your child.”

There’s that, too.

“... That would summarize it.”

Duval smiles, and leans forward.

“Cassian,” he says, gently. “Tell me about your ex-wife.”

“What do you want to know?”

“I want to know…” Duval considers Cassian’s question for a moment, running his fingers through his dark beard, and Cassian wonders if Duval keeps his beard specifically so he can look pensive with it. “When did you meet her?”

“Ten years ago,” Cassian says, and this, at least, is an easy question he’s perfectly fine with answering. “On Yavin 4. With the Alliance.”

Distantly, he thinks he sounds like he’s reciting information for the scene of a murder.

 _Time. Place. Motive_.

Duval jots down a few notes. “Uh huh. And what did you think of her when you first saw her?”

“I thought she was entirely ordinary.”

Duval allows himself a small smile. “Can’t say I’ve heard many men say that about their spouse, ex or not.”

“She was only there to help us,” Cassian says, feeling a sting at Duval’s words, and an urge to try and explain himself. “She had… information. A way for us to get to someone else, someone very important. I wasn’t… I couldn’t afford to think of her as anything but a means.”

“So you were indifferent.”

“She made me angry,” Cassian says, softly.

_“I’ve never had the luxury of political opinions,” Erso says._

_Luxury, Cassian thinks. It isn’t a word he’s ever associated with himself, or his work, or the Fest Rebellion, or the Coruscant Rebellion, or the Corellian Resistance, or the Alliance. It’s a word for the privileged, and the wealthy. It’s a word for Empress Teta, and the Galactic Opera House. It’s a word for Imperialists._

_Cassian doesn’t so much have political opinions as he has his life._

_He’s forgotten there are people in the galaxy who ignore the war between the Empire and the Alliance._

_The war is something that Cassian has never been without; it’s his biggest constant._

“Angry,” Duval repeats. “Not indifferent.”

“No. I would’ve liked to be. It would’ve been… It would’ve been easier.”

“I’m sure.”

Cassian can’t help but laugh. “No, I mean… What we were going to do, our mission… It would’ve been easier if I was completely indifferent to her. But instead, I was…”

“Angry.”

“She was familiar,” Cassian says.

_But he pauses, and looks at Jyn Erso one more time._

_She turns, and looks back at him._

_She’s twenty-two years old, four years younger than him, and looks it. She has long dark brown hair tied back messily, and big green eyes, and an expression on her face that suggests she’s daring not only the assorted rebels, but the galaxy as a whole to approach her, to doubt her, to give her any excuse to reach out and tear, and bite, and claw._

_It is a low-simmering rage, an understated fire, that Cassian has seen before._

_In Nerezza. In Taraja._

_In himself; or at least, in the person he used to be._

_He’s so tired now, so exhausted, single-minded, and unforgiving. He doesn’t have much of a fire anymore; if anything, he’s the ashes of the forest that the fire has consumed._

“She reminded me of people I used to love,” Cassian says, returning from the memory. “People who died a long time ago.”

Nerezza. Taraja. Himself.

“She made you angry, and… Nostalgic?”

“Wistful, maybe,” Cassian says. “But that’s not… She was… She was very bright. It was like… It was like looking at a wildfire.”

Duval looks thoughtful. “ _Wistful_ is not something a wildfire makes most feel.”

Cassian looks up at Duval.

“I was a spy,” Cassian reminds him. “I wasn’t used to feeling anything remarkable. Feeling anything beyond regret, or guilt, or sorrow. Anything pleasant, really. It’d been a long time, longer than I could really remember. A wildfire… Something bright, something spirited, something resilient… That would’ve been the kind of thing I would’ve been desperate to see. To remember still existed.”

He breaks off, and swallows, fiddling with the ring around his finger.

“What do you mean, exactly, when you call Jyn _bright?_ ”

“I’ve noticed…” Cassian frowns, trying to figure out how to explain this. “I’ve spent most of my life trying to get a read on people, trying to understand them. It was necessary, for the work I was doing. And most people… Most people have this… light. This light about them. Some of them are brighter than others. Jyn is the brightest I’ve ever seen.”

“Do you have it, this light?”

Cassian laughs. “No, not at all. I’m gray.”

He’s been told this before, many times. He’s starting to understand what it means.

“Gray,” Duval repeats. “Who else is bright?”

“Taraja,” Cassian says. “She was the first woman I fell in love with, she was bright. And my sister, Nerezza. She had her own fire. And, I think… I think my father was bright, too, but I don’t remember him that clearly.”

“Was your mother bright?”

“No,” Cassian says, surprising himself.

But he knows it’s true. Serafima was never bright like Nerezza was.

Cassian is his mother’s son.

Duval looks back over his notes.

He doesn’t ask about Cassian’s brother, Zeferino, and for that, Cassian is grateful. Because Zeferino was bright, had a fire like Nerezza did. But while Nerezza’s fire was warm, Zeferino’s was as cold as the ice of Fest.

“Is that when you fell in love with Jyn?” Duval asks. “When you noticed she was bright?”

Cassian hesitates, turning to look out the window.

Snow is falling heavy and thick on Fest, and the light outside is gray, and sharp, and frostbitten.

Cassian is also something one might call gray, and sharp, and frostbitten.

“No,” he says, in response to Duval’s question. “No, not then.”

“Then when?”

Cassian suddenly feels like he might begin to cry.

This is not unusual, as of late; and it wouldn’t be the first time he’s cried in Duval’s warm, softly-accented office, here in the heart of downtown Fulcra. He’s gone over a lot with Duval, a lot of his history, his story, in all its bitterness, its traumas, its gruesomeness, and its cruelty. And he’s cried during some of it, during the worst, his most shameful memories.

He isn’t proud of it, but he thinks that’s to be expected.

He has thirty years of horrors to reconcile himself with.

Cassian straightens, and folds his hands in his lap.

“When we died,” he says, giving Duval an answer. “I fell in love with her when we died. Because when I woke up, and I looked at her, I… I loved her. I just did. So it… I must’ve fallen in love with her when I died.”

Duval only looks at him, and if he’s uncertain as to which parts of Cassian’s statement are truth, and which are pretty lies, he gives nothing away in his expression.

But Cassian is only telling the truth.

He does that with Duval.

And he does that with Jyn.

Duval set his pen down, and folds his hands, mirroring Cassian’s stance. The two men face each other.

“Cassian,” Duval says, eyes focused. “Tell me about Jyn.”

 

* * *

 

**_0 ABY_ **

Consciousness returns to Cassian slowly, as most things do to him.

He first becomes aware of his hands, and the fact that they are quite cold. This tells him that while the rest of his body is warm, his hands are not; this leads him to believe he is mostly covered. Save for his hands.

Concrete thinking, it seems, is also returning quite slowly.

He focuses on his breathing, feeling his chest rattle and shake with each quiet inhale and exhale.

This leads to the realization that he _aches_.

His whole body feels like it’s been hit by a speeder; by more than one speeder, and more than once. Breathing is practically a challenge, as his rib cage feels like it’s being held together by little more than glue and tape, and his abdomen is almost rigid. He can still feel his legs, and his feet, and his toes, but his hip is sore, and seems to have its own heartbeat. And his spine is similarly painful, though it feels more bruised than anything else.

Carefully, Cassian’s eyes flutter open.

The first thing he’s aware of is light, which he thinks is fitting, since it’s the last thing he saw before he died.

_Though he’s closed his eyes, he opens them, as the wall of light speeds to him and Jyn._

_He doesn’t want to die in the dark_.

He blinks.

 _Jyn_.

 _Look around_ , Cassian’s brain suggests, helpfully. _Figure out where you are_.

The light, he’s realizing, is not the unnatural, horrific extension of a weapon that should never have existed, but rather fluorescent light coming from the ceiling. Everything in the room is a brilliant, sterile white, and Cassian spots medical equipment, and gurneys, and crates of medicine, and realizes he’s in some sort of medical wing.

But it isn’t the medical wing on base on Yavin 4.

Curtains have been drawn around the bed he’s lying in, so his view of the room is narrowed, and Cassian’s body hurts too much to move around a lot, but he manages to curve his neck just so that he’s able to see another set of curtains directly ahead of him, pulled so only half of a bed is exposed behind them.

He can see a pale white arm, the curve of a shoulder, dark brown hair--

His breath catches.

The hair moves, and the figure sits up, and Cassian realizes he can hear.

“... This is ridiculous, I swear, I’m _fine_ ,” the woman insists, and while her voice speaks in an accented Basic that is close to Jyn’s own accented Basic, it is a slight different accent, and definitely not Jyn’s voice. But it is a voice Cassian has heard before, though not in years.

A medical droid whizzes to the woman’s side, offering up a series of beeps, and she scoffs.

“I have more important things to do than sit around here, so if you’ll excuse me--”

The curtain surrounding the other bed is suddenly yanked, and Cassian finds himself face to face with Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan, a person he hasn’t seen in over two years.

They stare at each other.

Leia’s mouth has fallen open somewhat.

“Aach,” she says, and this use of an old alias makes Cassian wonder if perhaps he didn’t die, but rather, time traveled.

“Princess,” he says, and his voice is hoarse, an indicator that it has been some time since he last spoke.

The medical droid issues a loud beep and hurriedly rolls away. Leia steps out of the curtain around her bed and through the one surrounding Cassian’s, until she’s standing at his side, gawking at him.

They stare at each other, and then a wide grin splits Leia’s round face.

“Welcome back to the land of the living, Captain Andor,” she says.

“I died,” Cassian says.

He was so sure of it. He was so certain he was going to die.

_How am I not dead?_

Leia frowns.

“I was joking,” she says. “You’ll have to ask a medic about what happened to you, exactly. I’ve only been back with the Alliance for a day.”

“Where did you go?”

A sort of dawning realization overtakes Leia’s face.

“Oh, kriff,” she breathes. “Of course. You don’t know.”

“What?”

Leia tells him.

She got the plans. ( _She got the plans_.)

She lost the plans.

She was captured by the Empire, and taken to the Death Star itself.

She was tortured.

(Hence the aggressive medical droid, only trying to make sure she’s okay.)

She was rescued by “a farm boy,” “an egomaniac,” and “a two-legged nerf.”

She got the plans back.

She brought the plans to the Alliance.

The Death Star attempted to destroy Yavin 4.

The Alliance destroyed the Death Star.

“It’s… It’s _gone?_ ” Cassian repeats.

 _But it was just there_.

The Death Star just killed him. It killed Scarif, and likely Rogue One, and Cassian, and Jyn--

 _Jyn_.

“Gone,” Leia confirms, and she smiles. “And we couldn’t have done it without you, without the mission you led to Scarif. Even if it was, um, unsanctioned, and unapproved, we’re grateful. You’re a true hero, Aach.”

“Rogue One,” Cassian presses. “Who survived?”

Sorrow crosses Leia’s face.

“Just you and Jyn Erso, I’m afraid.”

Cassian closes his eyes.

Ten of his friends, ten of the best and brightest the Alliance had to offer. Ten people who wanted to do something good for a change, ten people who wanted to do something heroic, to be heroes.

And Chirrut Imwe, and Baze Malbus, two people who didn’t have to go at _all_.

And Bodhi Rook, who’d gone through so much just to get there and die.

And K-2SO.

K-2SO, who’d died for Cassian and Jyn. K-2SO, someone Cassian was never supposed to outlive.

“Jyn,” Cassian says, and it’s the first time he’s said her name since he died, and that feels important, somehow. “Jyn Erso, where is she?”

“Over by the window, I think. I saw her when I walked in, but I didn’t introduce myself.”

“By the… Where are we?”

“The _Redemption_ ,” Leia says. “It’s a medical frigate, with the Alliance. We’re a little bit of a mess right now; we had to abandon the base on Yavin 4, since the Empire found out we were there. We’re still getting the new one set up.”

“Right,” Cassian says, and tries very hard not to read too much into him dying and then waking up on a ship called the _Redemption_.

He looks at his body for a moment, before biting his lip, and forcing himself to sit up.

Leia startles at the movement, and seizes Cassian’s shoulder.

“Kriff, Aach, don’t hurt yourself--”

“I’ve had worse,” Cassian says, and this is sort of true.

He’s died before, and endured a long recovery period, with more critical injuries than these.

Though his hip really does hurt.

“Help me up,” he tells Leia, and she huffs, but throws her arm around his waist, and his arm over her shoulders, and she helps him stagger to his feet.

Cassian can hear distant voices, and he suspects this means that the irritating medical droid that was bothering Leia had gone on to find doctors to check on Cassian.

“Get me out of here,” he grumbles to Leia, and by that he means, _Take me to Jyn_.

He leans on her, and hobbles next to her, and the movement reminds him of Scarif, of the top of the citadel tower, of Jyn leading him to the elevator. He remembers knowing his body was maybe fifteen minutes away from dying, remembers knowing he’d done everything he could. He remembers believing he’d done enough.

_What now?_

Leia guides him out of the medical wing, to the similarly white hallway outside.

There’s a huge window dominating the wall, showing deep space, which at the moment consists primarily of a spiraling, distant supernova. It’s bright, and luminescent, and a hundred different colors set against the darkness of space.

A dying star.

Cassian feels like this is fitting, but he isn’t sure why.

Sitting on a bench in front of the window is a woman, her brown hair down, hanging around her shoulders, her back to them.

She doesn’t turn around, not even at the sound of Leia’s soft swearing, Cassian’s ragged breathing.

She only looks away from the dying star when Cassian collapses in the space on the bench next to her.

And it’s Jyn.

Her hair is lanky, and unkempt, and looks like it hasn’t been washed in a while, and Cassian has never seen it hanging down before. Her skin is pale, and oily, and scratched in places, and she’s got an old bruise on her chin, blossoming towards her neck.

But her eyes are still green, and still bright, and wide, now staring at Cassian.

He looks back, and wonders what he looks like now.

He has no idea anymore.

He doesn’t know what to say.

Dimly, he hears Leia walking away.

“Do you remember me?” he asks Jyn.

Slowly, Jyn nods. “Cassian.”

He hadn’t really thought she’d forgotten him, but it seemed like something worth checking.

“I died with you,” he says.

Jyn’s blank expression wavers, becoming torn between something like agony and something like hope. “Did we die?”

Cassian isn’t sure.

He’s beginning to think he didn’t actually die. Leia Organa’s appearance wouldn’t make much sense in his afterlife. He’d expected to see his parents, and his sister, and Taraja, and Wada. Not Leia Organa.

But Jyn in his afterlife; that does make sense.

Though his body is in so much pain, and he’d kind of assumed an afterlife would be free of bruised spines and achy hips.

“Maybe not,” he tells Jyn.

“I… I don’t know what’s real,” Jyn says, quietly, like it’s a confession.

And Cassian has been there before.

Carefully, he moves his hand, moving it to Jyn’s own hand, resting on her leg. He delicately covers the back of her hand with his palm, lacing their fingers together, letting the tips of his fingers brush her white pants-covered leg, and hears her exhale in his ear.

“We can figure it out,” he tells her.

Jyn looks at him.

Mimicking his slow movements, she lifts her other hand, and presses it to his cheek. Her touch is warm, but more distant than he’d expected, and this tells him his beard has grown out longer than it has ever been before.

She looks at him, and he looks back, unblinkingly.

He doesn’t know what he looks like anymore.

He doesn’t know what she’s trying to find in his face.

All he knows is that she finds it. She nods.

“Okay.”

She drops her hand from his face, to shuffle closer to him.

And she turns away from him, returning her gaze to the distant supernova, that dying star.

Cassian keeps his eyes on her.

 _You were with me when I died_ , he thinks. _Or when I thought I was going to die_.

He is promptly hit by two revelations.

One is the thought that follows: _And I’d like you to be there next time._

And this thought is a declaration, because dying is the only thing Cassian Andor has known about his future for certain. He knows he’s going to die. Sooner, rather than later, most likely. And painfully, in a dark alley, on some unknown planet, probably.

He’s died before. Once before. Flatlined twice, brought back twice.

He’d been alone then.

But this time, he hadn’t been alone.

And he thinks he doesn’t want to die alone ever again.

And he thinks the only person he desperately wants at his side, when he dies, is Jyn Erso.

And this leads to the second revelation, which is not so much a thought as it is a lifeline:

 _I love you_.

It is not the first time he’s been in love, and he thinks this is why he’s able to recognize the significance of promising his death to Jyn Erso.

Because it means he’s giving her his future.

In the only way he can, with the only thing certain about it.

His death.

 _I love you_.

Cassian has a history of falling in love very quickly, and very completely. He supposes this is, perhaps, not too surprising now.

“My father called me Stardust,” Jyn says suddenly, and unexpectedly.

Her eyes are still locked on the supernova ahead of them. That dying star.

“It was… It was stupid,” Jyn says, finally turning away from the supernova, looking at the white floor of the ship, looking like she doesn’t know why she’s spoken up at all.

“That’s how you knew that codename was for the Death Star plans,” Cassian realizes.

_“Stardust. That’s it.”_

_“How do you know?”_

_“I know because it’s me.”_

Jyn only nods. She isn’t looking at the floor anymore, but rather Cassian’s hand, still linked with hers.

“It isn’t stupid,” Cassian murmurs.

“I guess it did help us.”

“And it isn’t stupid that it was a nickname your father gave you.”

She glances at him after he says this, and the look on her face reminds him of the way she looked at him on the beach on Scarif: defiant, but teary-eyed.

“I meant what I said,” Cassian continues. “Your father would be proud of you. You did it, Jyn. The Death Star is destroyed.”

Jyn nods after he says this, her lips pursing together. After a moment, she gives a shaky exhale.

“I can’t believe it’s gone,” she says.

“I know. Me neither.”

(Here’s the thing about stars: they die all the time.)

“I can’t believe you’re still here.”

Cassian smiles at her. “I can’t believe you’re still here, either.”

She moves so quickly Cassian can’t track the movement. He only knows that one second, he’s looking at her bright eyes, and in the next, she’s kissing him.

He’s so startled he doesn’t do much of anything at first.

And then he smiles, and kisses her back.

It isn’t very graceful, and she’s trembling, and he knows he’s shaking too, and it’s a toss up if his shaking is from the pain in his spine and hip, or from the adrenaline rush of Jyn kissing him for the first time.

She pulls back, and leans her forehead against his.

“You’re real,” she says, sounding more confident than she had earlier, when she’d told him, _“I don’t know what’s real.”_

“I think so,” Cassian says. “Yes.”

He thinks he’s alive. His body aches. But his heart flutters quickly, looking at Jyn.

“Good,” Jyn breathes, and looks up at him.

“Good,” Cassian agrees.

Jyn looks at the far away supernova, the dying star, all that colorful, bright light.

And Cassian looks at Jyn.

And he knows he’s still alive.

Because Jyn’s light is still there, and it is not something he could fictionalize with his own mind.

It could never come from him, a perpetually half-dead, gray thing; he’s mostly ashes, with memories of life.

It could only come from her; something so bright, it outshines everything else he’s ever seen.

She’s something brighter than a wildfire. Something brighter than the unnatural light of a terrible weapon that should never have existed. Something brighter than a supernova.

Something brighter than a dying star.

 

* * *

 

**_10 ABY_ **

Cassian walks home from his appointment with Duval.

He’s living in Jyn’s apartment, has fully moved into the space, the two of them cohabiting like they haven’t in four years. It had been Jyn’s suggestion, an idea she floated on the transport from Sernpidal to Fest, after she had forgiven Cassian for leaving her, for being gone so long.

“You should be close,” she’d said, eyes locked on deep space as the transport flew through it. Cassian sat across from her, and stared at her. “With Fima, and everything. And I think… I think this would be good for you and me, too. Good for us to… Work on things.”

To work on them.

To work as parents, as friends, and maybe, one day, something more.

Cassian moved in the next day.

He likes Jyn’s apartment well enough; there are a lot of windows, so it’s easy for natural light to reach the rooms, even if that natural light is nearly always gray.

He unlocks the front door, and walks inside.

There is very little color in the apartment.

This isn’t Jyn’s fault, not exactly. She might’ve been living in the apartment for almost five months, but color never comes easily to Fest. The planet is stubbornly gray, and the gray tends to leak out into all aspects of daily life, until it becomes difficult to imagine anything else. Anything more. Cassian has long been proud of the gray, of Fest, but it feels a little suffocating now.

He can’t get the supernova out of his mind.

And Jyn. And her light. And the memory of waking up after Scarif.

Duval had listened as Cassian spoke, and hadn’t interrupted once, something Cassian had been grateful for, even if talking about that awakening had been easier than he’d expected. He thinks he shouldn’t be surprised by that; he’s always liked talking about Jyn, even though remembering the times they were happy can be rough.

But he wouldn’t call the first time they saw each other after Scarif being a particularly _happy_ memory.

It’d be more accurate to say he’d felt only _surprised_ upon waking up.

And a little lost.

This is exactly how Cassian feels at this moment, ten years later, on Fest.

Surprised, and a little lost.

He walks down the hall to the bedroom he shares with Jyn, and he lies on the neatly made bed, and he looks at the gray ceiling.

Snow is still falling outside the window, and it is completely silent.

He breathes, and stares at nothing.

Jyn finds him like this, some time later.

“Cassian?” She calls, and he can hear her walking through the apartment, but he doesn’t respond. The apartment isn’t big, and it only takes her half a minute to reach their room, and find him lying on the bed.

She goes to his side, and leans over him, and he blinks, and he’s back on the _Redemption_ , on his bed there, in the white room, with Leia Organa peering at him.

_“Welcome back to the land of the living, Captain Andor.”_

“Cassian, are you okay?”

He blinks again.

It’s Jyn leaning over him, and she doesn’t smile like Leia did then. Jyn looks concerned.

“Do you remember waking up on the _Redemption?”_ he asks.

Jyn stares at him.

There is more than simple concern in her face now; there’s a slight distress, maybe even fear.

“Hell of a counseling session,” she comments. “Why did Duval make you go through that?”

“He asked me to tell him about you.”

She frowns. “And you… You came up with _that?_ ”

“He asked me about when I fell in love with you.”

Jyn freezes.

“I…” she trails off. “That… That was when?”

This gets Cassian’s attention.

He turns his head, and looks up at her.

She’s still bundled up from her time outside in the snow, today in dark pants and a heavy knit sweater decorated in a pattern of zig-zagging gray stripes. He can tell she’d been wearing a hat, because her hair is flattened oddly in places, and sticking up in others. Her cheeks are rosy red, and there are snowflakes drying on the edge of her nose.

She’s so bright, still, ten years later.

“You didn’t know that?” he asks.

“No. Um, no, I… No.”

“Oh,” Cassian says. He frowns. “I thought for sure I told you that at some point.”

They’d had six years for it to come up.

And while Cassian doesn’t remember actually telling Jyn about the moment he’d realized he was in love with her, he does remember the first time he’d actually voiced the words: six months later, on Mantooine.

He’d been surprised that she hadn’t known already.

He supposes it makes sense that she hadn’t known about this, either.

“I’m sorry,” he says now.

“It’s fine, Cass,” Jyn says, though she still looks a little unnerved, and Cassian wonders what part of this revelation unsettles her the most. “It doesn’t matter.”

Well. There’s that.

“It doesn’t matter,” Cassian repeats, quietly.

They’re separated now.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Jyn says, quickly. “I meant, um. It’s in the past. And it, it’s just something I didn’t know. And now I do. And that’s fine.” She shrugs. “I just don’t think that fondly of waking up on the _Redemption_.”

And Cassian supposes that’s fair.

“Duval is having you talk about me, huh,” Jyn says, and he thinks this is her attempt at changing the subject, her way of pulling him back from the _Redemption_.

“He noticed my ring,” Cassian says.

“Ah.”

He looks at Jyn’s hands, resting on her stomach. She’s about seven months pregnant, and this is obvious, even under her heavy sweater.

On one of Jyn’s fingers is her matching gold ring, the one that had once belonged to Serafima Cassiano.

“That must’ve been fun to explain,” Jyn comments.

“He wondered if I sometimes call you my wife, and not my ex-wife.”

“Oh.” Jyn pauses. “Do you?”

Cassian looks back up at her, to meet her eyes. “No.”

Jyn smiles, but it’s sad.

“Yeah,” she says. “I don’t know what to call you.”

“I respond to _Cassian_ , or _Cass_. _Andor_ , too.”

Jyn rolls her eyes. “You know what I mean. Ex-husband is… strange. With Fima, and all.”

She gestures to her stomach as she speaks, and Cassian can’t help but smile when she names their son.

“Strange,” he agrees, and then he makes his own attempt at changing the subject: “How was your day?”

“Oh, fine,” Jyn says, shrugging. “We’re about three weeks away from officially opening, I think, so Amaia and I are starting to get information on our kids.”

“That’s great.”

“Yeah,” Jyn says, and she grins.

The new Fest orphanage, Cassian knows, is just as much Jyn’s baby as Fima is.

Naturally, they’re both coming into existence around the same time.

“I’m proud of you,” Cassian tells her.

Jyn flushes, looking away from him, and Cassian knows she hates it when people praise her, that she never knows how to deal with it, how to respond besides a mumbled _thanks_ , yet he can’t help but tell her, because he thinks she needs to know.

He thinks she’s always needed to know that there are people who are proud of her.

That there are people who love her.

_I love you._

Jyn’s eyes snap up, and Cassian realizes he’s spoken aloud.

They stare at each other.

Cassian doesn’t know what to say.

He won’t take it back, and he won’t apologize for saying it. He means it.

“You said that on Sernpidal,” Jyn says, softly, fiddling with the ring around her finger, and Cassian knows this is a sign she’s nervous, that she’s anxious, because he does the same thing.

“I did,” Cassian confirms, even though he’d said it to her in the middle of a longer speech.

_“I believe you, now. I understand why, and I understand how such a thing is possible.” He smiles. “So, yes; all the way. Wherever it takes us, wherever we go, whoever we become. I’m with you. I’m sorry it took me this long. I love you more than the cause, more than the war. I hope, one day, you will believe me.”_

“I still hope you’ll believe me, one day,” he repeats now, softly.

Jyn swallows hard, and looks away from him, to the window on the other side of the bed, the snow falling silently behind it.

“I’m trying,” Jyn says, and the sorrow in her voice nearly undoes him.

“None of this is your fault,” he reminds her. “I understand, don’t--”

“I know,” Jyn says, cutting him off. “I know. And I think you’re right, I think it’ll just take me time, to… To believe you. So.”

“Time,” Cassian agrees. “We have time.”

For once; they have time.

Jyn studies him, taking in his relaxed position, the way his arms are folded neatly over his chest. “Are you doing okay?”

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that? I’m not the one who’s pregnant.”

“Humor me.”

He sighs. “I’m okay, Jyn.”

“The session with Duval wasn’t too much? I don’t normally find you sitting in the dark like this.” She pauses, and clarifies, “It’s been a while, at least, I mean.”

“I’m okay,” Cassian repeats. “It’s just, uh. Do you remember what I asked you, when I first saw you after I woke up? On the _Redemption?_ ”

Jyn blinks, eyes unfocusing, trying to remember.

After a moment, she does.

“You asked me… ‘ _Do you remember me?_ ’”

“And you remembered my name,” Cassian continues. “And then I said something else. Do you remember what that was?”

This time, the answer comes more readily, even if it is not a pleasant one.

“‘ _I died with you._ ’ That’s what you said.”

“Yes.” Cassian looks away from her, and up to the ceiling. “Now I know that while we didn’t die, we were supposed to. And I think back to waking up, and how I… I was so _sure_ I was dead. I was so sure. But then you were there, and you were… You were bright, Jyn. And so was the supernova out the window, but you outshined it.”

She was so bright he could barely stand to look at her. He settled for the supernova instead. It’s burned in his memory.

Jyn’s light is, too. It always is.

“You’ve always been so bright. I noticed it the first time I saw you,” he continues. “You were a wildfire, and me, I was… Something cold, something close to death. Something gray. But you were bright!” He laughs, and he sounds a little hysterical, and he knows this isn’t helping him convince Jyn he’s okay, but he must say this.

“And that’s something I love about you. How bright you are. It’s always been so much to me, looking at someone so bright. It’s a lot. I’m not bright, not at all, and you’re light. I hope Fima is bright like you.”

Jyn stares at him, and Cassian knows she doesn’t know what to say to any of that.

He sits up.

“What do you feel like having for dinner?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok here we go:
> 
> Eranas Duval is an original character. The Redemption is a canon Alliance frigate, seen at the end of EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.
> 
> Italicized flashbacks taken from GRAY AREAS.
> 
> Disclaimer: so I know the narrative of YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS suggests Cassian and Jyn "woke up" for the first time post-Scarif on Hoth. while the correct answer for this discrepancy is "I forgot", another answer is that waking up on the Redemption did not feel like "waking up." Nothing felt real. Hoth was the first time they really began to understand what was happening, and what had happened.
> 
> This story is a timestamp for AMOR FATI, and is written in the style of that story: the first three chapters are Cassian's perspective, the last three chapters are Jyn's perspective. each chapter features a flashback. (Unlike AMOR FATI, which had two flashbacks per three chapters; again, I forgot.)
> 
> Cassian's half of this story is somewhat sad, and Jyn's half is turning into the most horrifically sappy thing I've ever written.
> 
> the story will likely be around 37k-40k by the time I'm done; I very nearly am, hence, the posting. I'll post a chapter every other day until done.
> 
> Cassian has, throughout the Nonsense, referred to Jyn as "bright." This story explores what exactly that means, and what that says about someone like Cassian Andor, long defined as gray.
> 
> This is a love story.


	2. you make me happy when skies are gray

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Cassian, are you happy?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "You Are My Sunshine"; the version I go for is by The Civil Wars.

The next day, Cassian goes with Jyn to the orphanage.

It’s something he does most days. The orphanage is nearly complete, and Jyn is becoming less and less mobile by the day, more easily tired, more easily stressed, and so Cassian has been stepping in more, running the errands she can’t, going to the long meetings that leave her aching and exhausted. He’s glad to do it, glad to help in any way he can; the orphanage is Jyn’s project, is a labor of love on her part, and he’s eager to see it fully realized.

Jyn’s co-founder, Amaia, is already in the orphanage when they get there, standing in the room that will soon become the main office of the building, though at the moment it looks more or less like an abandoned storage space. There are a couple desks and chairs, and nearly every surface is covered in a file or a datapad, save for one chair, which Jyn automatically moves to, sinking down onto it with a sigh.

“Fima,” she murmurs, one hand rubbing her stomach, eyes tightly closed. “Please relax.”

Amaia laughs. “Yeah, Jyn, tell him off.”

Jyn cracks one eye open to glare at her, and Amaia snorts, but quickly returns her gaze back to the heavy file in her hand.

Cassian squeezes Jyn’s shoulder. “Do you need anything?”

“I’m fine. It’ll pass. Give me a minute.”

“Sure,” he agrees, and walks away, approaching Amaia.

“Morning, Cassian,” she says.

“Good morning. How are you?”

“Doing well,” Amaia replies. “Actually, I’m really glad to see you.”

This is not a response to his presence that Cassian is used to, and so he stares at Amaia for a moment, before asking the necessary: “Why?”

“Because we’re getting a kid from Mantooine, and all his paperwork is in Mantooian, and I can’t read _any_ of it. Would you translate it?”

“Oh,” Cassian says. “Yeah, I can try.”

“Great,” Amaia says. “I should warn you, though, there’s a handwritten thing in there. _Handwritten_. On _paper_. Can you believe it? Do you think you can read Mantooian when it’s handwritten?”

Cassian is visited by a memory of Taraja, in their apartment in the Coruscant Underworld, sitting at the front table, carefully writing out short and simple vocabulary words, nouns in Mantooian meaning _store_ and _blaster_ and _Coruscant_. He remembers looking at her small, neat handwriting, the way the letters curved under her fingers, the significant way she pressed the pen to paper.

“I’ve had some experience,” he says, answering Amaia’s question.

Amaia nods, and then she reaches behind her, procuring a thick file, and shoving it into Cassian’s arms.

He takes it, and looks around for a moment, but as there is clearly no place to sit and take notes, he leaves the room.

The hall outside the office is chilly, as the building’s central heating hasn’t been installed yet (something Cassian has heard plenty about, from Jyn’s near-daily rants on this very subject) and so Cassian climbs the main stairs, going to the second level.

The rooms upstairs are mostly complete, as this is where the children will sleep, and Jyn and Amaia were determined to make them as perfect as possible. Cassian looks in each of the rooms, taking in the immaculately made beds, each covered in warm, neatly-knitted blankets, the dark wooden dressers and nook-like closets, the bookshelves that line the sides of the rooms (the bookshelves are empty, though Jyn has said something about having a separate facility for donations, and that she expects to fill each bookshelf) and the carefully painted white walls, clean and smooth.

Cassian reaches the main common room of the first floor, where a huge, empty fireplace dominates the space, a small field of plushy chairs littering the space in front of it.

There’s a long wooden table on the side of the room, but it’s covered in a light white sheet, and Cassian doesn’t want to disturb it, so he settles for going to the middle of the room, and sitting on the floor, surrounded by plushy chairs on all sides. He opens the file, using the gray light from the tall windows behind him to illuminate the words, and carefully spreads the documents in a small half-circle in front of him.

The boy from Mantooine is named Adisa Khel. He’s nine years old. His father died from some kind of illness (Cassian doesn’t recognize the word, and so he leaves a question mark next to it, to remind himself to look up the translation later) when Adisa was four, two years after the death of Adisa’s mother, who died when Adisa was two. She was part of the Atrivis Sector Force, a pilot, and her ship was shot down over Mygeeto, when the Atrivis Sector Force lended her squadron out to run a mission for the Alliance, only a couple years before the end of the war.

Cassian can’t help but be reminded of Shara Bey, whose funeral on Sernpidal he and Jyn have recently returned from, and her young son Poe Dameron.

But Shara didn’t die in her starfighter.

And Poe still has his father.

Adisa is entirely alone, and has been for years. He has no living family on Mantooine, and since Mantooine is currently in a situation similar to Fest’s (too many war orphans, not enough homes for them), he is being sent to Fulcra, to live in Jyn’s orphanage.

It’s a situation that has befallen all of the war orphans moving to the new orphanage.

Cassian finishes going through the short biography of Adisa, and turns to the next page, which offers a detailed medical history, and he leaves a lot more question marks on this page, as Taraja didn’t really take the time to teach him how to say medicinal words in Mantooian.

But Cassian definitely reads and speaks more Mantooian than Amaia, who is also from Fest; most Festians don’t read or speak a single word. Cassian knows he’s unusual in this respect.

(He’s unusual in a lot of ways, but he’ll acknowledge the Mantooian thing.)

He expects Adisa won’t be the only Mantooian child to come to the orphanage, and so he makes a mental note to get a Mantooian dictionary as soon as he can, to brush up on the words, so the children have an adult who can understand their familial language, and maybe even converse with them in it. He thinks that might be something that can cheer them up, make the transition to this foreign planet smoother.

He turns the next page in the file, and almost sends a thin book falling to the floor.

He manages to catch it, and he sees it’s very delicate, and that it looks more like a journal than a book, and so he carefully places it on the floor in front of him, running a hand over it to smooth it out.

This is the second piece of handwriting he’s seen in two days, and this is very uncommon, so Cassian frowns when he studies the unmarked cover, carefully opening the journal.

He stills when he reads the first words, written in Mantooian.

He can translate them easily enough.

They’re words Taraja used to say to him.

_My brightest sun._

He reads the next lines:

_It is important to both your mother and me that you know us, and with the terrible--_

(or is it _horrible_? Cassian can’t remember which word is which; the point is clear, anyway.)

_with the terrible war raging in the galaxy, and your mother gone, this task has fallen to me._

And Cassian realizes this journal is a story, written and told by Adisa’s father.

A romance; Adisa’s parents’ love story.

From how they first met, as teenagers, attending the same school in a small town on Mantooine. Femi, Adisa’s father, describes how Adisa’s mother, Thema, first caught his attention in their art class; they were building sandcastles (unsurprising, considering Mantooine is literally covered in sand) and Thema’s was by far the most ornate, the most extraordinary.

Femi’s sandcastle was far less remarkable.

_Your mother was always the more incredible one._

Cassian knows this journal is intended for Adisa, and that he has no business reading it.

But he finds himself reading it anyway.

And this is how Jyn finds him, half an hour later.

Cassian is still sitting on the floor in the middle of the room, Adisa’s file spread out around him, the journal resting in the space directly in front of him. But he isn’t looking at it anymore. Rather, he’s staring into the fireplace next to him, a fireplace that is empty and dark and devoid of flame.

Jyn shuffles into the room, and touches his shoulder. “Hey.”

He turns his head, and blinks at her. “Hi.”

“I, uh, there’s more,” Jyn says, and Cassian sees now that she has a datapad under her arm. “A couple more Mantooian kids with their files in Mantooian.”

“Oh, sure,” Cassian says, and he takes the datapad from Jyn. She hesitates, looking at the squishy chair next to him.

“If I sit in this, will you help me up?”

Cassian smiles, and nods. “Of course.”

Carefully, Jyn sinks into the squishy chair, shifting to make herself more comfortable, and then she surveys the room.

“It doesn’t look too bad, does it?”

“The room?” Cassian asks. “Definitely not. Everything here looks amazing, Jyn. You’ve done a brilliant job.”

Jyn nods, gratified, and then her eyes catch on the journal on the ground.

“What’s that?”

“It was with Adisa’s file,” Cassian says, and clarifies, “That’s the name of one of your Mantooian kids.”

“Adisa,” Jyn repeats.

“Make sure to ask him how he says his name when you meet him, I’m not sure I’m saying it correctly.”

“Okay,” Jyn says.

Gently, Cassian picks up the journal, and hands it to Jyn. “It’s a love story. About Adisa’s father and mother. From when they met, to when she died, in the war. Adisa’s father wrote it for his son.”

“ _What?_ ” Jyn straightens, leaning forward to peer down at the journal, holding it loosely in her hands. “Really? Did you read it?”

“Um, most of it. I couldn’t understand everything, but I… I got most of it, I think.”

“Why do we have it?”

Cassian shrugs. “I guess Adisa’s father knew what he was doing. It looks like it’s been shuffled around with the rest of Adisa’s file, and Adisa, since he died. It’s intended for Adisa.”

Jyn stares down at the journal. She carefully opens it up, and runs her finger over the first page, the beautifully written Mantooian.

“What’s it say?”

“Um, a lot,” Cassian replies. “But Adisa’s mother was actually stationed on Fest, for a bit, during the war. Apparently she complained about it a lot.”

“Relatable.”

That gets him to laugh. “Sure. But, uh. So her name was Thema, and he was Femi.”

As he speaks, he gently turns the pages in the journal until he gets to the mentioned part about Fest, and he circles the Mantooian word for Fest with his finger.

“They miss each other. They’re married, but Adisa hasn’t been born yet, and it’s just the two of them, and they’re very far apart. Although, I mean, Fest isn’t _that_ far from Mantooine. It’s quite close, really. But for them, it’s very far.”

He’s rambling somewhat, but Jyn is sitting very still, and makes no move to interrupt. Her eyes are locked on the thin paper, and Cassian feels badly for Femi, for being unable to articulate his adoring words in an eloquent way.

“And they haven’t even been married for that long. Femi talks like they’ve been together for a while, but… Married couples tend to sound like that. And she’s very cold. Uh, literally, I mean. She’s not used to how cold Fest is. She can’t _believe_ how cold she is. She kept telling him this, he remembers. And she misses him, and she hates the war, and she’s…”

He trails off.

Jyn waits for him to continue, and when he doesn’t, she looks at him.

“She’s… What?”

Cassian sighs, and leans closer to her, so he can turn the page of the journal. He points to one section, and reads it aloud, the Mantooian words.

Jyn frowns at him. “I have no idea what you just said.”

“My translation is poor, but basically…” Cassian frowns. “Femi remembers her telling him, ‘ _I am afraid the war will never end. I am afraid I will never come back from it. I am afraid that I will never see you again. I am afraid that this is where I leave you_.’”

Silence falls, save for the snow outside, which is heavier now, pelting the window with ice.

Jyn clears her throat.

“I think you translated it okay,” she murmurs.

“They were young when they had Adisa,” Cassian continues. “According to Adisa’s file, it has their birthdates. They were both twenty-three. And Femi doesn’t always clarify the years of the events he’s describing, but he doesn’t mention Thema being pregnant with Adisa on Fest, so they can’t be older than twenty-two. Younger, likely. They’re very young, but they’re… They’re very in love.”

Jyn stares at the journal, and there is something distant in her eyes.

Something like longing.

Cassian desperately wants to touch her, to take her hand, to press his hand to her cheek, but he doesn’t dare move.

He only sits on the hard wooden floor next to her, and he waits.

“We used to be like that,” Jyn says. “Do you remember that?”

_“Do you remember me?”_

“Yes,” Cassian says.

“We were very young, and… and very in love, and it just…” Jyn swallows, and he watches as she flexes her fingers, consciously forcing her grip on the delicate paper to loosen.

The war asked too much of them.

And they asked too much of the other.

Abruptly, she holds the journal back out to Cassian, and he takes it.

“Will you read it to me?” she asks, eyes locked on the floor in front of her, the shadows from the gray light coming through. “In Mantooian?”

Cassian pauses. “You won’t be able to understand it.”

At this, Jyn looks at him.

“I’m not sure it’ll need a translation,” she says, and he thinks he knows what she means.

Because it’s him, reading a love story to her.

And he loves her.

And she wants to believe this, so badly.

He nods, and straightens, taking the journal from Jyn.

At the same time, Jyn moves, and takes his free hand in hers.

She doesn’t say anything, only settling herself more comfortably in the chair.

And Cassian, feeling close to overwhelmed, feeling affectionate, still feeling a little raw and undone from the memory of waking up on the _Redemption_ , lets himself slide down, resting his head and shoulders on the squishy chair with her, his head next to her stomach, next to Fima. And he pulls her arm down, around his shoulder, and rests their entwined hands on his chest.

He wonders if Jyn can feel the fluttering of his heart.

If she does, she doesn’t comment.

She only moves her other hand, resting her fingers in his hair.

And Cassian begins to read.

His Mantooian is terrible; it’s rusty, and slow-going, and he knows he isn’t pronouncing everything right, knows he’s likely butchering the words, but Jyn doesn’t know any better.

And besides, that isn’t the point. The Mantooian words aren’t the point.

The point is his voice, reading the love story, to her.

His voice, soft and slow and hesitant, gaining more confidence when he reads _I love her_ in Mantooian, because that’s something he knows how to say about Jyn in every language he can plausibly speak, and possibly even in languages he doesn’t know he can speak, and Jyn closes her eyes, and her head drops a little on the squishy chair, and she’s breathing near his cheek.

 _I love her_ , Cassian reads, and this is something he will make sure Fima always knows about him.

That he loves Fima’s mother, more than anything.

He finishes, and turns his head, and there’s a small smile on Jyn’s mouth, and he watches her face as her breathing evens out, as she falls asleep.

She looks peaceful, more peaceful and relaxed than he’s seen her in _years_.

It makes him smile.

He sets the letter on the floor next to her, and looks up at the ceiling.

It’s painted white, to reflect the gray light coming in from the window, to add as much _light_ to the room as possible.

He stares at the ceiling, at the white, until his eyes slip closed, and he falls asleep.

 

* * *

 

**_1 ABY_ **

“This is the warmest I’ve been in months.”

“Should I take that as a compliment?”

Cassian laughs as Jyn rolls her eyes at his comment, and he catches her hand when she leans down to swat his shoulder.

He turns his head, pillowed on her thighs, so he can look up at her, where she’s leaning against the wall, looking down at him. She’s pulled her shirt back on, but it’s one of her lighter shirts, and so he can see the kyber crystal under it, can see that her skin is goose bumped, flecked with the cold of the Echo Base, an unavoidable aspect of building a base on an ice planet.

“Aren’t you going to put your shirt back on?” She asks him, her frown turning concerned.

“This would be a good time to remind you I’m from Fest,” Cassian says. “And you’ve been there, you know the cold is similar.”

“That doesn’t make it _bearable_ ,” she mutters, but she doesn’t move to reach for a second shirt for herself, and Cassian wonders if she finds his declaration that he’s okay without one to be a kind of challenge. He wouldn’t mind it at all.

She lifts her other hand, and runs her fingers through his hair.

“Your hair’s getting long again.”

“You like my hair long.”

That gets her to smile. “Yeah, I do.”

Quiet falls, that kind of perfectly still, content silence that only occurs when you’re alone with someone you love. The relaxation of a post-orgasm moment does add to this, and it’s been some time since Cassian felt this perfectly whole, this serenely warm, even if there’s a snowstorm roaring across Hoth, just outside the walls of the room.

“Who was your first?”

Cassian blinks, taking in Jyn’s question. “Sorry, what?”

“The first person you had sex with,” Jyn says, and her cheeks are red again, and she looks embarrassed, which Cassian finds both terribly amusing and very endearing.

“I think you can guess,” he tells her, and she does.

“Taraja?”

“I said I only had one girlfriend before you.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t… You could’ve slept with someone else before her.”

Cassian shrugs. He knows he probably could have, but he hadn’t.

He’s never really been interested in having sex with someone he doesn’t love.

“How old were you?” Jyn asks.

“Um… Seventeen.”

“That seems young.”

Cassian’s eyes slide to Jyn, and she must see the question in them because she tenses up, and speaks again, quickly, before he can ask.

“Was she your first kiss, too?”

“No, actually,” Cassian says, and he notices Jyn relax as he speaks, not pressing her further. “That was a girl called Lexis; she was one of my friends at the Academy, one of the first I recruited for the Coruscant Rebellion. My roommate, Daren, threw a party at the end of our first year, and we played… some kind of drinking game involving Corellian whiskey. I don’t remember the specifics. But Lexis kissed me.”

He can remember Lexis’ big smile, her laughter, her hands on his face, the simple fact that Lexis kissed him. Ethan had made a big deal out of it, muttering about it for days, leading Cassian to believe something else must’ve happened during the party, even as Ethan denied this.

“What did she look like?”

“Lexis?” He frowns, because he hasn’t thought about Lexis in years. He makes a note to ask Asori if she knows where she is, if Lexis ever left her undercover work in the Empire, if she’s still with the Coruscant Rebellion. “She had… Big, bright, orange-red hair. _Naturally_. It was kind of shocking to me, the first time I saw her; I’d never seen someone with hair like that before. Uh, brown eyes. Lots of freckles. She had to suppress her Outer Rim accent, like I did; she was from the Atravis Sector, and I was from the Atrivis Sector, and we kind of bonded over that close spelling.”

“Did you like her?”

“Only as a friend. She felt the same way about me. But we were fairly close, all through our time at the Academy.”

Jyn nods, but her eyes are a little distant, looking at the plain wall of their room. Cassian lifts his arm, and touches her face, causing her to look at him.

“Jyn…”

He has a hunch as to why Jyn hadn’t wanted him to ask her the same question she’d asked him, but he needs to hear it from her, and he thinks it’s something he should know.

Jyn seems to gather this from his expression, because she starts shaking her head.

“No, no,” she says. “No. It wasn’t… It wasn’t like you’re thinking. It wasn’t awful.”

“Then, what--”

“Lexis was your friend,” Jyn says. “And Taraja was someone you loved. They were… You wanted them. Not the same way, but you’re happy it was them. Those are good memories for you. And for me, it was… It was only when I felt really alone. When I hadn’t touched anyone in a while, and I mean… I touched people, obviously. I was constantly getting into fights, but… No one was holding my hand, or patting my shoulder, or running a hand through my hair, and I was… I was lonely. And that was always why I ever let anyone kiss me, or have sex with me, or even just _hug_ me. Because I was so alone, and for a little bit, I wasn’t. And that was always enough, but…”

“Jyn,” Cassian says again, and he holds her hand more tightly in his, a reminder that he’s right there, he’s right there with her.

“So I wasn’t ever, you know, forced or anything,” she continues. “And it was always on my terms. But it was still… It was different for me than it was for you. I don’t… I don’t remember their names. I don’t remember my first kiss, or the first man I slept with. Because it doesn’t really matter. It could’ve been anyone.” She pauses, and looks down at Cassian, and her eyes are a little wide, and a lot uncertain.

“Is that bad?” She whispers.

“No, of course not,” Cassian says, quickly and emphatically. “Of course not.”

“You don’t think… Think differently of me, or--”

“Kriff, Jyn,” Cassian says, fighting the urge to roll his eyes, because he’s quite sure such an action would send an incorrect message. “Absolutely not. No. You only… You sound upset, and so that makes me upset. I wish it’d been better for you.”

Jyn nods, and he hates how relieved she looks.

He wonders if she’s held back telling him this, for over a year now, because she’s been worried about what he would say.

He forgets, he thinks, how young Jyn is. She’s twenty-three, which isn’t _that_ young, not that young for an Alliance soldier, but young by most other barometers. She could still be in school on some planets, could be someone who’d only come of age five years before in others, and still can’t partake in certain recreational activities in a handful of smaller systems.

Certainly, she’s seen more of the galaxy than most, but she’s never really had the time to take in cultures, to talk and learn among other species and people.

To really be _intimate_ with anyone.

To feel like she can tell Cassian anything, and he won’t think differently of her for it.

“You know you can tell me these things,” Cassian says. “You can tell me anything you’d like. I’m not… I won’t judge you for it. It won’t make me leave you.”

“Yeah, I know,” Jyn says, sighing a little. “It’s just a little difficult for me.”

“Why?”

“Because I… I understand now what I was missing, then.”

Cassian looks at her, and she shrugs, and she can’t quite meet his eyes.

“I’m still not quite used to wanting one specific person,” she mumbles. “It’s still kind of… It’s a lot, for me. I’m getting used to it.”

Cassian knows she loves him.

She’s told him before. About six months before.

But he thinks what she’s telling him now is different.

She’s telling him that she trusts him, absolutely. That she believes him when he says he loves her, when he smiles at her, when he goes out of his way to see her, or do nice things for her. That he’s glad to be with her.

In a way, this is harder for her to say than _I love you_.

This almost feels more permanent.

It’s more trusting, at least.

More intimate.

And for someone like Jyn, someone who has been alone for so long, someone who is still trying to figure out how to _not_ be alone; it’s a lot.

It’s personal, and it’s almost a secret, and he’s grateful she’s trusting him with it.

Her past, and how it reacts to her present.

He knows a thing or two about the precarity of trusting your past to another person.

He takes her hand, and presses a kiss to her knuckles, and she smiles.

They lie there, in the quiet, and listen to the wind howling outside the base.

 

* * *

 

**_10 ABY_ **

Amaia eventually wanders upstairs to find out why Jyn and Cassian had never come back, and takes some glee in waking them up, an amused smirk on her face. Jyn flushes bright red, and mutters something about _don’t say a word_ and Amaia lifts her hands in a gesture of _I didn’t_ say _anything_ , and Jyn huffs.

Cassian carefully returns the journal to Adisa’s file.

He knows Adisa will want to look at it at some point, if only to see his father’s handwriting, run his fingers over the paper he’d so carefully inscribed his thoughts down on, the story of the love of his life.

Cassian thinks about his parents, and the very little he has from them.

He thinks about Serafima, and the relics of her family, the rings, he’s only just received.

He looks at Jyn, and he thinks of Lyra Erso, and the very little Jyn has from her.

Later that day, when they’re on the transport heading home to Jyn’s apartment, he asks, “What did you do with your necklace?”

He’s noticed she isn’t wearing the one she wore for the last six years, the one Cassian had gotten for her on Ilum, the one to replace the one she’d given him on their wedding night. Cassian had spent the bulk of the last six years with Lyra Erso’s kyber crystal necklace around his neck, until about eight months ago, when he and Jyn had decided to divorce, and he’d given the necklace back to her.

It had always belonged to her more than it did to him, and it felt correct that he should return it.

It makes sense to him that she’d taken off the one he’d given her, with their divorce, but he’s surprised she hadn’t taken up Lyra’s again, since she’d had it for so much longer.

Jyn looks at him now.

“They’re both in my closet,” she says, and he can’t help but be surprised that she even _kept_ the one he’d given her, that she hadn’t simply left it behind on Onderon, or done away with it entirely.

Jyn isn’t sentimental very often, and he wonders.

“You kept them both.”

“I thought I might find a use for them,” Jyn says, shifting a little as she speaks, and Cassian isn’t sure if her discomfort is due to her pregnancy, or the possibility that she’s lying to him, or at least omitting some truth.

He fiddles with the ring around his finger, and tries to figure out what the best thing to say could be.

“And… Have you? Have you thought of anything?”

Her eyes slide over to him, though she remains straight-backed, her face turned away, looking ahead.

“Yeah,” she says. “I was thinking… Well, Fima has one thing from Serafima, right? Her name. And probably her eyes, if Shara was right about the Sernpidal eyes thing.”

Poe Dameron had inherited Shara’s Sernpidal eyes, like Cassian had inherited Serafima’s. Cassian’s sister had, too, but his brother hadn’t, and so Cassian really doesn’t know if Fima will end up with eyes like his, or closer to Jyn’s.

“And I was thinking…” Jyn bites her lip, and then in one quick breath bursts out, “He could have my mother’s necklace.”

Cassian blinks, taking this in.

“Of course,” he says, barely a moment later. “I think that’d be great.”

Jyn looks at him. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, of course.”

He wonders why she thought he wouldn’t be okay with it.

“It’s very important to you, and it’s from your family,” Cassian continues. “Of course Fima should have it. Absolutely.”

“You don’t think it’s… Grim?”

“Grim?”

Jyn rolls her eyes. “‘Here, Fima, this was your grandmother’s necklace. She gave it to me right before she abandoned me.’”

Jyn’s hesitation becomes a little clearer.

“Giving it to him doesn’t mean you’re going to abandon him,” Cassian says, quietly.

“It brought me a lot of comfort,” Jyn says, and Cassian is startled to see her eyes are a little watery, and he wonders how long she’s been thinking about this, how long it’s been hurting her. “But I wonder… Maybe it only brought me comfort because she _wasn’t_ there, and otherwise it’s just a dumb necklace with a stupid rock. Maybe it’s only for people who are separated. Because my mother gave it to me, and then she left me, and then I gave it to you, and you…”

 _You left me_.

Cassian had only had the necklace for two years before he’d left Jyn, inadvertently taking it with him.

He hadn’t done it to hurt her, hadn’t done it to spite her; it’d just been something he’d gotten so used to wearing, he’d almost forgotten it hadn’t always been with him.

A reminder that he had her, that she had him, even when they were apart.

“Maybe it isn’t a symbol of abandonment,” Cassian suggests.

He doesn’t address Jyn’s other claim, of the necklace being dumb, and having a stupid rock; she might believe everything else she’s saying, but he’s absolutely certain she doesn’t truly believe the kyber crystal is a stupid rock.

Jyn is staring determinedly down at her lap, doing her best to surreptitiously wipe the tears from her eyes. “What would it be, then?”

“Hope.”

That gets her attention. She frowns, pausing in her movements.

“When you had it,” Cassian says, slowly, making sure he gets this right, “It reminded you of your mother, and your hope that even if you were alone, physically, that she was right there with you, in some other way. Next to you, even if you couldn’t see her. Watching you, looking over you. And when I had it, and when I was separated from you… It made me hopeful that our separation wasn’t permanent. That I’d see you again. Because I had your kyber crystal necklace, this thing you’d loved your whole life, and that made me feel like you couldn’t possibly be that far away.”

Jyn still hasn’t looked at him, but she’s very still, and he knows she’s listening.

“And you won’t ever be far from Fima,” Cassian continues. “So, for him, it’ll just be… A promise. A reminder. Because it’s a gift from you, and your family. Not a… Not a memento he gets because you’re gone. But a gift he gets, because of how you want to stay with him, of how much you want him.”

Cassian hopes he isn’t rambling as much as he fears he is.

He stops speaking, and he waits, and he doesn’t look at Jyn, but gives her the space and time to collect herself, to reflect on his reasoning.

The transport rumbles under them, snow pelting the window outside, but it’s still fairly quiet. It’s later in the day, but not quite rush hour, and so there are only a handful of other people on the transport, and no one is paying any attention to the tired-looking man and very pregnant woman sitting in the back row of seats.

“Maybe that’s why I kept them,” Jyn says softly. “The necklaces. Both of them.”

She touches Cassian’s hand, and so he looks up, at her.

“Maybe I was hopeful,” she says, and the light in her face makes Cassian smile.

It always does.

No one pays any attention when the teary-eyed pregnant woman kisses the smiling man.

No one knows it is the first time she’s kissed him in almost eight months.

No one knows that the last kiss, before that, was some four years earlier.

No one knows, and no one cares.

But Cassian knows, and cares. And Jyn knows, and cares.

And that’s really the whole point.

 

* * *

 

“You’re doing better,” Duval repeats, looking over Cassian thoughtfully.

“Yeah,” Cassian says. “We both are.”

“You, and Jyn.”

“Yeah.”

“I see,” Duval says, tapping his pen gently against his notepad.

It’s snowing outside the window over Duval’s shoulder, and Cassian lets it catch his attention, his eyes focusing on the way the snowflakes twirl and spin, the way they pelt the glass irregularly, the way they settle on the windowsill, brushing against dangling icicles.

“Cassian, are you happy?”

Cassian blinks, and looks at Duval again.

The counselor’s face is politely impassive, giving nothing away, no explanation for what Cassian feels is an odd question.

“Of course,” Cassian replies.

“Describe that to me.”

“What, being happy?”

“What’s that like, for you?”

The way he emphasizes _for you_ makes Cassian nervous.

“There are a lot of good things happening,” Cassian says. “The orphanage is set to open in a week, and we know the names and backgrounds of all the kids that will be living there. I’ve started doing freelance translation work for the mayor’s office. Jyn is doing well, and we’re, um, working on us. Trying to figure out if we can be together again. And Fima is almost here, of course.”

Duval finishes jotting down a few notes. “And that’s how you know you’re happy? Good things happening?”

“Why wouldn’t I be happy?”

“But how do you know you _feel_ happy?”

Cassian is beginning to suspect he’s missed something.

“I’m happy when I’m… When I’m hopeful,” he says. “When I feel good things are happening, when I’m doing good. When people around me are happy; that makes me happy, too.”

He thinks he sounds ridiculous, but it’s a ridiculous question, describing happiness.

“You’re happy when you have a purpose.”

“Isn’t everyone?”

“Do you feel you _need_ a purpose to be happy, Cassian?”

“Of course,” Cassian says. “I’ve… I was always devoted to the cause because it was something I _had_ to do. That’s where I devoted myself. It was the right thing to do, and it… It was what I did.”

Duval nods, and flicks through a few more pages of notes.

“How has your sleeping been?”

“Fine,” Cassian says.

“Irregular?”

“It always is.”

“And how long has it been that way?”

“As long as I can remember,” Cassian says, shrugging. “It’s just how I sleep.”

Duval considers this. “Even when you were a child?”

“Yes. Why does this matter?”

“Cassian,” Duval says, voice unexpectedly gentle. “Do you think I’m happy? Do you think Jyn is happy?”

“Yes?”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, because you both smile?” Cassian asks. “Because Jyn laughs? Because she talks to Fima all the time, and smiles when she does it? Because she’s so excited about the orphanage opening? Because she likes spending time with Amaia?”

“You do these things too, don’t you?” Duval queries. “So you’re similarly happy.”

“Why wouldn’t I be? There’s no reason not to be.”

“And is this why you think you’re happy? Because there isn’t a reason not to be?”

“There isn’t,” Cassian says, scoffing a little. “I’m not fighting anymore. I’m _home_. I get to stay with Jyn again, and we’re going to have Fima, and the orphanage.”

“So you feel differently than you did during the war.”

This statement gives Cassian pause.

Because he should definitely feel differently than he did during the war. Completely differently. He’s been talking to Duval for a few months, and learning how to be relaxed, to be less anxious, to live with the trauma.

But why does he _feel_ the same?

Why does he still feel like there’s something lodged in the back of his throat? Something dark at the corner of his eye? Something hanging over his head? A noose, around his neck?

“Is Jyn’s happiness different from yours, Cassian?”

“Yes, she’s bright,” Cassian says, without thinking.

And he isn’t.

He’s just gray.

Duval is very still for a moment.

The snow seems very loud.

“Most people are bright, aren’t they? Varying levels, but usually somewhat bright, correct?”

“Yes,” Cassian says, and he’s getting tired of trying to explain this to Duval.

“The people who you’ve noticed, and considered to definitively not be bright, are you, and your mother.”

“You keep wanting me to talk about Jyn and my mother. Are you trying to give me a complex?”

Duval allows himself a small smile.

“Of course not,” he says, voice warm. “I am just… This similarity between you and your mother is striking, is it not?”

Cassian shrugs.

One of his Sernpidal relatives, Yakovi Cassiano, has repeatedly remarked that Cassian strongly resembles Serafima, but it was also something Cassian had grown up knowing. He’s got her eyes, and her cheekbones, and her hands.

And he knows he shares aspects of his personality with her. He’s quiet like her, and introspective, but he can be authoritative and confident when he needs to be, like she could be. He inherited a perpetual guilt that he thinks she also held, and he worried about not being good, like she did.

He doesn’t know why Duval is fixating on these similarities he shares with her.

“I want to give you homework, Cassian,” Duval suddenly says, and Cassian forces himself to look up at the counselor.

Duval looks calm, and tranquil. Content.

Something almost foreign, to Cassian.

“I want you to try and remember the last time you felt truly happy,” Duval says. “As happy as you think someone like Jyn is. Someone bright.”

 

* * *

 

In the dream, Serafima is standing in her pottery studio, scrubbing gray clay off her fingers with a basin of hot, clear water.

In the dream, she calls to her son, and he goes to her side, and washes his gray hands next to hers.

In the dream, she looks at him, and she says as she did in real life, _You are so good, Cassi._

In the dream, Cassian says to her, as he did in real life, _You are too, Mama._

In the dream, Serafima says, as she did in real life, _I have tried to be._

In the dream, she moves her gray hand through the water, and holds her son’s identically gray hand.

 

* * *

 

Jyn shakes Cassian awake.

“Cassian? _Cassian.”_

Cassian blinks, and his vision is blurry, and his cheeks are wet, and he’s crying.

He lifts his trembling hand, a hand that is not gray but clean and brown, to his face, and feels the tears on his cheek.

Jyn’s eyes are wide, and she looks scared.

“You were sobbing,” she murmurs. “In your sleep. What were you dreaming about?”

“My mother.”

“The day she died?”

“No,” Cassian says, and there’s bewilderment in his voice, because he doesn’t know why such a simple dream, the memory of watching Serafima in her pottery studio, could’ve caused this kind of visceral reaction in him.

“We were just, uh…” He shakes his head. “Just washing our hands. She’d been making pottery.”

Jyn blinks, her fear turning to confusion.

“Huh,” she says.

“Yeah, I don’t know.” Cassian shakes his head again. “Let’s just go back to sleep. I’m sorry I woke you.”

“It wasn’t even you, it was Fima. I might not want to be awake, but he’s decided he does.”

Cassian laughs, and touches her hair. “Do you want me to make you something? Tea, maybe?”

“That’d be great.”

“Okay.”

He gets to his feet, and walks down the hall, going into the kitchen.

He can still hear his mother’s voice in his head.

_Cassi. Cassi._

Outside the window, the moon is a sliver of light in a gray sky.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Amaia Chias is an original character from AMOR FATI. Lexis Quo is an original character from GRAY AREAS.
> 
> Mantooine is, in the Nonsense, a very hot desert planet with a remarkably powerful sun, so a phrase like "My brightest sun" would be a very warm endearment. it reads like a pun coming from a father to a son, but I imagine the Mantooian words for "son" and "sun" are quite different.
> 
> [This doesn't necessarily mean Taraja thought Cassian was bright, like he thought she was. But it is possible that she did. And it's possible she is not the only one who has thought this.]
> 
> Taraja, Lexis, and Jyn are all so bright to Cassian, and there's a running joke in the Nonsense that Cassian doesn't have a type but this suggests he actually does, it's just not something a lot of people would register as being a type.
> 
> [If you read YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS you also understand why Ethan might have had a strong reaction like that to watching Cassian's first kiss. this is also a kind of hint at the Ethan Bain story, which i promise i am working on after this story is done!]
> 
> The dream/memory about Serafima washing her gray clay covered hands occurred in real life in GRAY AREAS, and as a dream in AMOR FATI. She had something to tell Cassian in both these instances, and she is trying to tell him something again now.


	3. i am my mother's only one

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Ah! You are Serafima’s boy!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Flume" by Bon Iver, from FOR EMMA, FOREVER AGO.

Jyn enters the final month of her pregnancy with an air Cassian chooses to describe as “graceful,” and Jyn chooses to describe as “pure, kriffing exhaustion.”

She insists on going to the orphanage nearly everyday, and is there the day it officially opens, standing proudly at the front doors, introducing herself to every child that walks inside. They all seem a little startled at the sight of her, at how pregnant she is, but Jyn’s enthusiasm is infectious, and her devotion clear.

They love her, instantly.

Cassian can relate.

He also meets all the new kids, all fifty-two of them, but they’re more nervous around him than they are with Jyn and Amaia, and he isn’t sure if it’s because he’s a man and they likely remember how the majority of the leaders of the Empire were men, or if it’s because they can tell he’s a little more shaky than Jyn and Amaia, that he’s jumpier, less relaxed around them than Jyn and Amaia are.

Cassian just hasn’t spent a lot of time with children, and it shows.

Amaia is a schoolteacher, and spends her days surrounded by children, and this is the second orphanage Jyn has opened, having spent the past two years actually living in one, so much so that being with children all the time has almost become a sort of default state for her.

This has not frequently been Cassian’s experience.

The last time he spent so much time with children was when he was twenty-one, when he went back to Fest with K-2SO, when he became a sort of mentor to the children that populated the Fest Rebellion. He’d taught them how to fight, how to shoot, how to survive, and had often been overwhelmed with his guilt for doing any of it. But it’d been necessary; they were children, in a war zone, and they needed to know how to defend themselves.

It had been the only way he could possibly _save_ them.

But it’s peacetime now, and none of these war orphans need to know any of that. They have no reason to carry a blaster, no reason to twirl a dagger, no reason to build a bomb.

He thinks he’s forgotten how to talk to children like a normal person, without the threat of the war coloring his words.

“But you do just fine with Poe,” Jyn says, when he brings this up, a couple weeks after the opening of the orphanage.

They’re at a Bothan food place on the outskirts of Fulcra, to talk to the owner about a deal to get food to the orphanage. Jyn is determined to introduce the children to a variety of foods, to illustrate the diversity of the galaxy to them. And she thinks this will also help the handful of children who are not from Fest to feel less like outsiders, surrounded by so much that is Festian, including the food.

“Yeah, but that’s _Poe_ ,” Cassian says, shadowing Jyn towards the counter at the back of the restaurant. “Talking to him is basically like talking to Shara and Kes.”

Jyn frowns, shooting him a look over her shoulder. “You don’t talk to Poe like how you talked to Shara, or talk to Kes.”

“Not exactly, obviously--”

“Why do the children make you nervous?” Jyn asks, cutting straight to the point, turning on the spot to face Cassian directly.

Cassian sighs. “I don’t want to screw them up.”

Jyn pulls a skeptical face. “Cass, they’re already a little, um, ‘screwed up.’ They’re _war_ orphans. They’ve all seen terrible things, just like you. Maybe think about how that’s something you can relate to them on.” She pauses, and adds, “You’re a war orphan, too, you know. And you’re trying to recover from the trauma of all of that. Maybe tell them about that.”

And with that, she turns around, going to the counter, and hitting the bell on the top for service.

Cassian hesitates, considering her words.

It’s something to think about.

On top of that other thing he’s been thinking about, the so-called homework Duval gave him, to try and remember the last time he felt truly happy. He hasn’t told Jyn about this task, unsure how to articulate it in a way that wouldn’t make her feel worried, or concerned. And he doesn’t want her to think he _isn’t_ happy with her, because he is.

He must be.

_Why wouldn’t he be?_

But he hasn’t had a whole lot of luck so far, trying to remember a time he was happy like Jyn is, like Jyn has been. He does laugh, and he does smile, and he is excited about the orphanage, and Fima, but he still feels a disconnect from it all; and it isn’t an _odd_ disconnect, either. It’s a familiar one. There’s always been a kind of disconnect.

He just doesn’t know what it is. He always thought it was the war.

But there is no war, now, standing between him and feeling happiness.

He follows Jyn to the counter.

A man comes out from the back room. He’s old, his hair a nearly blinding white not commonly seen on gray Fest, but his eyebrows are shockingly dark, contrasting in a way that is almost comedic. His face is round, and heavily lined with age, but his eyes are sharp, and these eyes only fleetingly land on Jyn before turning to Cassian with a focus Cassian doesn’t like to see.

The man is _staring_ at him.

Cassian knows he’s paranoid, understands that he occasionally believes he’s being watched when he knows he isn’t, but he definitely knows when someone is openly staring at him.

Jyn notices the man’s determined gaze on him too, and clears her throat.

The man looks at her.

“Can I help you?”

“Yes,” Jyn says, but pauses. “Are you the owner?”

The man nods. “Yes, I am.”

“You aren’t a Bothan.”

“No,” the man agrees, because this much is obvious. Bothans are short, sentient mammals, with thick brown fur, pointed ears, and beards, and this man is very much human, and going by his accent, a native Festian. “My business partner was, though. He passed away a very long time ago.”

“I see,” Jyn says, and without further ado, she launches into her spiel, one Cassian has heard about ten times before, in different food places around Fulcra.

Part of him wants to walk away, to get away from the man’s strange staring, but there’s no way he’s leaving Jyn alone with him.

The man listens patiently to Jyn, and eventually nods, and says he thinks he can work something out with her.

“Great,” Jyn says, and her voice is a little pricklier than normal, likely because Cassian is practically twitching with nervousness at her side. “Cassian, do you have the form in your bag--”

“Ah! You _are_ Serafima’s boy!”

The man’s exclamation makes Cassian freeze, frozen in the position of pulling the requested form out of the bag over his shoulder.

Slowly, he looks up, meeting the man’s gaze, which is no longer narrowed and thoughtful, but bright and joyful.

“Um,” Cassian says, because he hadn’t once considered his resemblance to Serafima to be the reason for the man staring at him. “I, um. Yeah? Serafima Andor was my mother.”

“I _knew_ it,” the man says, beaming. “I saw her in your profile, when you turned your head. You looked very like her when you were little, but the resemblance might be even more pronounced now.”

Cassian stares at the man, trying and failing to place him, unable to figure out how this man might have known Cassian when he was a child, when Serafima was still alive.

The man must recognize the confusion in Cassian’s face, because he frowns, his expression turning sympathetic.

“You do not remember this place, do you?”

“Um,” Cassian says again, but he looks around, studying the tables and chairs that litter the restaurant, the thick curtains that line the windows, the paintings on the walls of images associated with Bothawui, the homeworld of the Bothans. His eye catches on a painting of three brightly-colored moons, and he is at once hit by realization.

He’s been here before.

_Cassi, go wait in the kitchen, I am almost done._

“She worked here,” he says, softly. “After my father died. She was a waitress here.”

He hadn’t realized how close they were to the house he’d grown up in, on the outskirts of the capital city.

He thinks he hasn’t been in this restaurant in about twenty-six years.

“That’s right,” the man says, smiling again. “We loved her here. My wife absolutely adored her, they got along very well. And we all adored her children, including the little boy who would occasionally follow her to work, playing in a corner of the kitchen while she waited tables out front.”

“I don’t remember you,” Cassian says. “I’m sorry.”

The man shrugs. “I wouldn’t really expect you to. You were very young at the time. I only recognized you because of your resemblance to Serafima, and your name. It is not a very common name on Fest.”

“No,” Cassian agrees, because his name is Serafima’s name, her last name, Cassiano.

“And you were so young when she worked here. You were her youngest, correct?”

“Yes.”

“So we saw you the most,” the man says, a fond look in his eye that Cassian doesn’t know what to do with. “We’d see your sister, sometimes, and your brother, too; it was the three of you, if I remember correctly.”

“Yes, three of us.”

“The girl and the boy were polite,” the man reflects. “Older, more determined to be independent, with your father gone. The girl also looked like Serafima, though her attitude was different; but goodness, did she make us laugh. I’m sorry, what was your sister’s name?”

“Nerezza,” Cassian says, choking a little on the name, as he always does. “And my brother was Zeferino.”

“Those are Festian names,” the man says, nodding. “That’s right. Zeferino was more like Serafima; he was much more serious than Nerezza, didn’t fool around as much, though he did more when he was younger. But he didn’t look a thing like Serafima. More like your father, I expect.”

“Yes,” Cassian says, because Zeferino had always looked more like Gabriel than Serafima.

“It was always a treat, to see Serafima’s children,” the man says, grinning, a faraway look in his eyes. “How polite they were, how entertaining. How much they clearly adored each other. You, especially; your siblings _loved_ you.”

Cassian feels like he might break if he says anything, so he only stands there, frozen.

“And you, you were very much Serafima’s son,” the man continues. “You were quiet like her, but when you were together… My wife and I never had children, and we _loved_ how much you clearly adored her. It was a wonder to see. You smiled, like her. And you were sad, like her. You always followed her, always held her hand, always tried to make her laugh. It was very, very sweet.”

Cassian doesn’t know what to say.

He stares at the gray tiles below his feet.

He feels very cold, very stunned, and his heart seems to have fallen out the pit of his stomach.

Because this man knew him, and knew his mother, and he’s completely convinced that Cassian’s affection for Serafima was obvious.

And this implies that Serafima knew Cassian loved her.

Cassian has long feared that she hadn’t known, hadn’t known that Cassian thought she was a good mother, the best, that he forgave her for not being at home much, that he understood she still loved him even when their political affiliations diverged so magnificently.

Cassian would tell her that he loved her, but he’s long feared it hadn’t been enough.

But here’s this man, Serafima’s old boss, insisting this wasn’t the case.

And there’s this new thing, too:

_And you were sad, like her._

His hands are tight in fists at his sides.

He drags himself back to the present, to Jyn’s voice answering a question from the man.

“... Any day now,” Jyn says, and she’s smiling at the man, whose delighted grin has only seemed to grow.

“Wonderful, wonderful,” the man says. “Do you know what it is?”

“A boy. We’re, uh… We’re naming him after Serafima, actually. Fima.”

“Fima,” the man repeats. “Oh, that’s wonderful. Well if your boy loves his mother half as much as this man here loved his, then you will be very happy indeed.”

“I know,” Jyn says, looking over at Cassian.

She’s smiling at him, and it’s a kind smile, and it nearly undoes him.

_And you were sad, like her._

There is something in the man’s words that is poking at his mind, that is directing his attention, that is telling him something important has just been communicated to him.

_Cassi. Cassi._

He needs to get out of there.

It takes everything he has to remain still, to wait for the man and Jyn to finish their conversation, to wait for the man to assure Jyn he’ll be in touch about delivering food to the orphanage, to wait for Jyn to thank the man for agreeing to work with her.

“Of course, of course,” the man says, and then he looks over at Cassian, who forces himself to meet the man’s still overwhelmingly delighted gaze. “And it was very, very nice to see you again, Cassian.”

“Um, you too, er…”

“Aitor,” the man says. “I expect to see you again soon. With your son.”

“Sure,” Cassian says, and then he looks at Jyn, and she recognizes the wildness in his eyes, because she clears her throat and makes her farewell quick.

Cassian leads the way back through the restaurant, past the tables and chairs, past the painting of the three moons, past the ghosts he swears he can see out of the corners of his eyes, and out through the door, into the frigid street outside.

Jyn is tucking her scarf more tightly around her neck, and she waits for the door to close behind them before she speaks.

“Cassian, are you okay?”

“I, um--”

Distantly, he knows his breathing has become short and harried, knows he’s building a sweat on the back of his neck, knows his heart rate is becoming erratic and quick, knows he needs to calm and think.

He knows he’s panicking.

He can only see that painting of the three moons.

_And you were sad, like her._

He’s two seconds from breaking into a full run, two seconds from leaving this restaurant, and all the ghosts inside of it, but then he looks at Jyn, and really sees her.

Her eyes are very wide, and very scared.

But she isn’t scared of _him_ , exactly.

She’s scared he’s going to run.

Scared he’s going to run, and not come back.

He’s done it before.

And he’s trying to not do that anymore, trying to be better, trying to earn her trust, her faith, back.

And it is with this thought in mind, this near single-minded determination to prove himself better, to not let Jyn down again, that he forces himself to stop, and still, there in the street.

He closes his eyes.

_You are_ my _son, aren’t you, Cassi?_

_Serafima’s brown eyes, his eyes, looking at him--_

He opens his eyes, so he can’t see the dead anymore.

Moving mechanically, moving instinctively, he reaches his arm out, and snags Jyn’s hand in his.

“Can we leave?” he asks.

“Yeah, Cass,” Jyn says, and she sounds surprised, and he knows that’s to be expected, knows she probably assumed he really was going to run then, but it still stings. “Where do you want to go?”

“We should get out of the cold,” Cassian murmurs, and Jyn nods, and begins to pull him down the street.

He focuses on the weight of her hand in his, focuses on the sound of her footsteps, and he lets Jyn anchor him.

He hears her voice in his head, a memory, ten years old:

_“I… I don’t know what’s real.”_

They’d anchored each other then, reminding the other of what the present meant, and how they fit into it.

He thinks, maybe, he needs this again.

But he knows his family is dead. He does. He watched Serafima and Zeferino die, and he spent hours sitting next to Nerezza’s dead body, and he buried her on his own. He _knows_ they’re dead.

It’s been awhile since they’ve surprised him, though. And never like this.

Whenever he’s spoken about them, it’s been on his terms, through his memories. He’s built a narrative up in his head, has a handful of cultivated, memorable moments that he can reflect on, and share. He’s told Jyn many of these moments, these bits and pieces of time with his family, virtually everything he can remember about them.

But this, this. This is new.

He remembers even _more_ now, his memory snapped awake by the sight of the old man, Aitor, the restaurant, and that painting of the three brightly-colored moons.

_Mama._

Memories he didn’t even know he had.

_And you were sad, like her._

He follows Jyn indoors, and down, to an underground tunnel, the kind that is jampacked by pedestrians trying to go about their day during snowstorms, but is quite empty at the moment, due to the quiet atmosphere outside.

The walls of the tunnels are adorned in swirling gray mosaics, and Cassian has been in this tunnel before, can practically hear Nerezza’s contented humming in his ear, can almost feel Zeferino’s arm brushing his, can almost see his mother’s shadow on the ground ahead of him.

He looks at the dirty gray snow under his feet.

It should be quiet.

It’s just him, and Jyn.

But he can hear his mother’s voice in his ear.

_Cassi. Cassi._

“Cassian,” Jyn says, firmly.

She’s talked him down from panic attacks before, when the nightmares and the horrors become too much, and he’s left breathless and stunned.

But this is different.

Because the memories aren’t _bad_ ones.

Not necessarily.

“I forgot,” he tries, and his voice is oddly hoarse.

_Cassi._

He sounds kind of like he’s been screaming, but he hasn’t.

_And you were sad, like her._

“What did you forget, Cassian?”

_You are_ my _son, aren’t you, Cassi?_

Jyn’s hand is still tight in his, and it is very quiet in the tunnel, and very dark, and very gray, and he needs to think, and figure out what about this is making him react so violently, what the man in the Bothan restaurant had said that could make him come so undone like this.

_And you were sad, like her._

“I watched my mother cry in that restaurant,” he says, and his mother’s voice finally goes silent.

Serafima’s tears, so foreign, so suspect, so unwanted.

He watched her cry once, when he was six, shortly after Gabriel died.

He remembers that.

He’d forgotten he’d watched her cry one more time, three years later.

A week before she died.

In the back room of the Bothan restaurant, when she hadn’t known he was there.

“Tell me?” Jyn says, and it’s a question, and she’s giving him an out, a chance to bury the memory again, to only have the happier ones of Serafima.

But he thinks this is important.

There is a truth in it, something he’s forgotten, and this is why it’s overwhelming him now.

_And you were sad, like her._

“It starts with Nerezza,” he says, because most things in Cassian’s life began with Nerezza, and her influence, and her rage, and her fire.

(Cassian’s love of bright things was aided by Nerezza’s fury, a fury that was scorching, a fury of someone he adored.)

The tunnel is dark, and Jyn’s hand is warm.

He thinks he can hear Nerezza’s voice calling his name.

_Cassi! Cassi!_

 

* * *

 

**_17 BBY_ **

“Cassi! Cassi!”

Cassian is nine years old.

He’s staring at the painting of three brightly-colored moons on the wall of the Bothan food place, and he’s thinking about color, and the lack of it on Fest, the lack of it within himself, and he thinks he’d like to visit Bothawui someday, to see those colorful moons.

A hand waves in front of his face, obscuring the painting.

He blinks, and turns his head, finally acknowledging Nerezza.

Nerezza, who’d turned sixteen years old two weeks previously, making her newly of age on Fest, and who at the moment is taking her status as an official adult very seriously, by corralling her younger brothers into a booth in the back of the Bothan food place where Serafima works.

“What are you looking at, Cassi?” Nerezza asks.

Zeferino, fourteen years old, is already seated, perusing a menu and generally ignoring Nerezza, as per usual.

“The painting,” Cassian says. “With the moons.”

This gets Zeferino’s attention. He looks up, following Cassian’s finger, pointing at the aforementioned painting.

“What about it?” Zeferino asks before Nerezza can.

“It’s bright,” Cassian says.

“Sure, Cassi,” Nerezza says, and while she doesn’t sound dismissive, she does sound a little bewildered, maybe even amused. “But looking at a painting will not get you something to eat. Let’s sit down, okay?”

And Cassian has never not followed a direction from Nerezza, and so he sits next to Zeferino, letting Nerezza sit down on the bench opposite them, the table in between them.

Nerezza brushes her short hair out of her brown eyes, picking up a menu. “What do you feel like eating, Cassi?”

“Kriff, I hate Bothan food,” Zeferino mutters, dismissively.

Nerezza scowls at him. “Watch your language. And don’t let Mama hear you say that. Or, worse, her boss.”

“Why would anyone open a Bothan food place on _Fest?_ Bothan food is so bland.”

“Zeferino,” Nerezza warns, her voice cold as ice.

Cassian zones out, choosing to ignore his siblings’ bickering. It isn’t new for them; he’d be more worried if they _weren’t_ fighting.

Privately, he agrees with Zeferino.

But he also agrees with Nerezza, that this opinion should not be voiced, at least not while inside the Bothan food place.

He looks across the restaurant, glancing over the painting of the three brightly-colored moons, and spots the human owner of the restaurant, Serafima’s boss, making his way over to their table.

Cassian quickly jabs an elbow into Zeferino’s side, and his brother quiets before the man can hear his grumpy complaints about Bothan food.

“If it isn’t my favorite customers,” the owner says, and Cassian spots Zeferino slouch a bit in shame.

“I bet you say that to all your customers,” Nerezza replies, smiling winningly up at the man.

“I would _never_ ,” the man says, but he’s grinning. “What’ll you three be having today?”

Zeferino’s face does a funny little contortion, likely him biting down whatever honest opinion he wants to voice, and so Nerezza intervenes.

“Surprise us?”

The owner grins, jotting down a note on his notepad. “Feeling daring, hm?”

“Let’s go with that,” Zeferino mumbles.

“Where’s our mother?” Cassian asks the man.

“Doing inventory, in the back,” the man replies. “I’ll swing by and let her know you’re here.”

“Thank you,” Nerezza says.

The man nods, and finishes writing with a flourish. “Three surprises coming right up.”

He walks away, and Zeferino waits until he’s out of sight before leaning across the table to glare at Nerezza.

“Bothan food is not a good time to be _daring_ ,” he hisses.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Zeferino, trying something new won’t kill you. It’s just food.”

“You’re right,” Zeferino says. “I suppose this is tamer than the nonsense you get up to with the Rebellion. Not to mention the shit you let _Cassian_ get into.”

Nerezza’s eyes blaze, and she leans forward too, getting into Zeferino’s space.

“We are not having this conversation here,” she snaps.

“What conversation? You’ve clearly made your choice.”

“Zef,” Cassian tries, a knot in his stomach tightening at the looks of disgust and dislike both his siblings are wearing, glowering at the other, mirroring the other in the worst of ways.

“Stay out of this, Cassi.”

“Why?” Nerezza demands. “You’re dragging him into it.”

“ _I’m_ dragging him into it? Wow, that’s _rich_ , coming from you, Nerezza.”

“I didn’t _drag_ him into anything--”

“Oh, of course, that was Papa--”

“Don’t you dare--”

And Cassian, tired of his siblings’ bitter anger, tired of their circular arguments that seemingly involve him without him being allowed to voice his opinions, to defend himself, gets up and walks away from the booth.

The owner of the restaurant is currently chatting with a customer, and so Cassian walks to the back of the restaurant, ducking under the counter, and goes into the kitchen.

A cook and a waiter are there, and they both recognize Cassian, so they only nod at him, though the cook does helpfully point his spatula towards the back room of the restaurant, where a dark gray door has been prevented from fully closing by a small block.

Cassian approaches the door, peering in through the gap between door and frame.

The room is fairly dark, a single lightbulb from the ceiling illuminating the room in thin white light. Cassian can see crates of food, boxes of silverware, bins of extra materials, all piled neatly on top of each other and against the walls, and in the middle of all of this, sitting on a small stool, is Serafima.

Cassian freezes at the sight.

Because his mother is hunched over, one hand pressed to her face, and thanks to the quiet of the room and the light from the bulb, Cassian can hear her sobs, can see her tear-filled eyes.

Serafima is crying.

Cassian has only seen her cry once before, some three years earlier, after his father died.

He remembers being startled at the sight, feeling unnerved, unmoored, and scared.

His mother is the toughest person he knows, and he doesn’t know what to do when she’s so clearly upset like this.

Cassian is nine years old.

He hovers in the doorway for a moment more, watching, and then he pulls the door open.

Serafima jumps at the added light, hurriedly wiping her face, and then she looks up, a smile and quick explanation on her lips, until she realizes it’s Cassian standing in the room with her.

“Cassi,” she says, hesitating for only a moment before plastering a warm grin on her face. “When did you get here? Are Nerezza and Zeferino with you?”

“Mama,” Cassian says, and he doesn’t know what else to say.

“Oh, this,” Serafima says, and she looks away from him, searching around her, scooping up an abandoned datapad at her feet, as Cassian approaches her. She’s still sitting, and he’s standing, and so he’s about a head taller than her. “Sorry, I got a little… Distracted. Are you hungry? Did you order? I can--”

But she breaks off, as Cassian reaches her, and throws his arms around her in a hug.

For a moment, Serafima is completely still.

And then she breathes, and returns the hug, pressing her face into Cassian’s shoulder.

“Mama,” Cassian whispers, and this seems to break Serafima.

She begins to sob again, and only holds Cassian more tightly, and Cassian bites his lip and looks at the ceiling, because there is something about Serafima crying, crying right in front of him, that makes him want to cry too. And he thinks him crying would only make her cry harder, and then they’d be stuck in an awful cycle of sobbing with no end in sight.

“Mama, why are you crying?”

Serafima sniffles, shaking her head. “I’m sorry, Cassi.”

“No, Mama,” Cassian says, quickly. “It’s okay. I only… Why?”

_Are you hurt? Did something happen?_

_How can I help you?_

Cassian is nine years old.

Serafima pulls back a little, taking Cassian’s hands in hers, looking up at him.

“It’s not your fault,” she murmurs. “And it isn’t… It is not your problem to solve. My sadness is not your fault, and not something you can fix.”

“Why are you sad?”

Serafima shrugs, and she’s smiling, but it’s a sorrowful smile, and it doesn’t quite reach her eyes, her brown eyes, the eyes Cassian inherited.

It’s also Cassian’s smile.

“I think I’ve been a little sad, for various reasons, most of my life,” she says. “I think it might just be… My father was melancholic, too, and I think it might just be something I inherited from him. Perhaps the only thing I inherited from him.”

Serafima has never spoken of her father to Cassian before, and so he stares, rapt.

But Serafima doesn’t elaborate further.

“I think it might just be a trait I have,” Serafima says. “Like I have curly hair, and a thin face.”

“Like we have the same colored eyes?”

Serafima smiles, and this smile is more true.

“Yes, Cassi,” she says. “Like we have the same eyes.” She lets go of one of Cassian’s hands, to press her palm to Cassian’s cheek.

“Mm,” she murmurs. “You are _my_ son, aren’t you, Cassi?”

“Yes, Mama.”

“You’re sad, too,” Serafima notes. “You have my melancholy, Cassian. And for that, I am… I am very sorry. Nerezza and Zeferino don’t seem to have it, but you…”

Cassian frowns.

He knows he’s quieter than both his siblings, knows he prefers to listen in silence than converse; but he can definitely talk when he needs to, can be direct and demanding when his work with the Rebellion asks him to do so. But it isn’t quite his default state, isn’t something he does automatically.

And he does get sad, thinking about the war, and the people who die in it. He worries, and stresses, even as he works for the Rebellion, even as he recruits kids his own age and younger, kids who die in the streets of Fest, their blood staining the gray snow red, images he carries with him, everywhere he goes.

He worries he is not good.

“But you can learn to live with it,” Serafima murmurs, thoughtfully. “You’re so young.”

Maybe he can still be intimidating, and confident, and authoritative, like Serafima.

Even with the sadness.

Maybe he can still be something more.

Maybe he can still be good.

“Yes, Mama,” he says.

Serafima brushes Cassian’s hair out of his eyes, and then gets to her feet, taking his hand in hers.

“Let’s go see your sister and brother.”

Nerezza and Zeferino are still where Cassian had left them, in the booth, and appear to still be in the thick of an argument, but both quiet up when they see Serafima. Cassian returns to his spot next to Zeferino, while Serafima squeezes in next to Nerezza, pressing a kiss to her daughter’s hair.

“How are you all doing today?” Serafima asks, reaching across the table to touch Zeferino’s hand, a display of affection Zeferino allows.

“Fine, Mama,” Nerezza says, but her spine is stiff, and Zeferino is similarly tense next to Cassian.

Cassian thinks quickly, trying to come up with something to diffuse the tension.

“Ezza has a girlfriend,” he says.

Nerezza stares at Cassian, her cheeks turning bright red, while Zeferino snorts, and Serafima beams.

“Ezza!” She exclaims, turning to her daughter. “Since when?”

“Since yesterday,” Nerezza mumbles. “Don’t make it a big deal.”

“What’s her name?” Zeferino asks, and he does sound honestly curious, and not derisive, like he had earlier.

“Elba,” Nerezza mumbles.

“Do we get to meet her?” Serafima asks.

Nerezza rolls her eyes. “Maybe? It’s been a kriffing _day--”_

“Watch your language,” Serafima interjects, voice gentle.

“I don’t want you all weirding her out,” Nerezza finishes. She turns to Cassian, and scowls. “And _you_ were supposed to keep a _secret_ , Cassi.”

Cassian shrugs, unrepentant, smiling at Nerezza’s disgruntlement.

And Nerezza can never stay mad at him; she smiles back.

Their food arrives then, deposited by Serafima’s boss, grinning widely as he explains the components of the dishes he’s brought.

Cassian struggles to contain his laughter at Zeferino’s torn face, eyes wide, staring at a dish that is a dark purple in color.

Serafima waits until her boss has disappeared back into the kitchen, and then she surveys the food, and her children’s stupefied faces, and _laughs_.

“Children, what have you done?”

“It was Nerezza’s idea,” Zeferino insists, and this is the truth.

“This is very ambitious,” Serafima says. “These dishes are usually ordered by actual _Bothans_. Not easy for human consumption.”

Nerezza has never backed down from a challenge before.

She straightens, shoving her hair back.

Cassian thinks the fuzz on one of the fishes is changing color.

“I can eat this,” she insists. “But I don’t know if Zeferino can.”

And Zeferino has never backed down from a challenge given by Nerezza.

He straightens as well, rolling up his sleeves.

Cassian thinks one of the dishes might be _breathing_.

“You’re on,” Zeferino says, and pulls the suspicious purple platter towards him.

Serafima points out one for Cassian that she thinks is relatively safe, and it is this dish she splits with Cassian, while Zeferino and Nerezza dig into the other foods, eating more out of spite towards the other than any real desire to taste.

Serafima laughs at her older children’s antics, and Cassian watches her.

_And you were sad, like her._

 

* * *

 

**_10 ABY_ **

Cassian and Jyn go home.

Cassian cooks dinner, while Jyn calls Amaia at the orphanage, checking in, reporting on the food she’s managed to secure for the children.

She glances at Cassian as she speaks, her concern an almost tangible thing Cassian can feel.

He’s been quiet since describing the memory of that day in the Bothan restaurant, a week before Serafima died.

_“You have my melancholy, Cassian. And for that, I am… I am very sorry.”_

He’d forgotten that Serafima had said that.

He’d forgotten that his mother had believed that this lifelong melancholy, the sadness that chokes his throat, that overwhelms him, that lingers over his beliefs and personality, is a genetic thing, part of his makeup, part of his identity.

That the war might not be the sole cause of it.

But that the melancholy was part of Serafima, and something she passed on to her son.

A genetic memory, a familial trauma.

Jyn ends her call with Amaia, and silence falls in the apartment for a moment.

Cassian fills a bowl with Festian stew, and carries it to the table where she’s sitting, carefully depositing it in front of her.

“Cassian,” Jyn says.

“I’m not hungry,” Cassian says, avoiding her eyes. “I’m going to go to bed. There’s more stew on the stove, and definitely wake me up if you need anything--”

“Cassian,” Jyn says again, and takes his hand. “Please, look at me.”

Cassian closes his eyes for a moment, gearing himself, and then he looks at Jyn.

There is concern in her gaze, focused and kind.

But there’s also affection, and sympathy.

He sits down next to her.

“Talk to me,” Jyn whispers.

And Cassian does, because she asked him to, and because he thinks he needs this.

“I’m scared,” Cassian tells her, and Jyn squeezes his hand.

“Why?”

Cassian is pretty sure she knows why. He told her everything he could remember from the memory of watching Serafima cry in the Bothan food place, while he and Jyn stood in the frigid tunnel, almost three decades later.

But Jyn wants to hear his thoughts now, and she doesn’t want to assume anything.

They have a history of assuming things about the other, and it hasn’t always led them to good places.

“I told you that I want Fima to be bright like you,” Cassian says.

“Yes.”

“I also… I don’t want him to be sad, like me.”

“Cass,” Jyn says, but he isn’t finished.

“I don’t know how to… to _not_ be sad,” Cassian says. “I don’t remember not feeling like this. And I think… I think you know this, too.”

Seven years ago, on Zastiga, faced with a plan to gather the Alliance Fleet together again at the expense of thousands of innocent lives, Jyn got a glimpse of how Cassian always felt.

_“Do you feel like this all the time?” She asks, and as far as conversation starters go, this is a remarkable one._

_He almost smiles._

_Jyn shakes her head, and looks at the rocky ground, kicking a loose stone with her boot. “I feel… Frustrated. Angry. Sad. This is awful, but I… I don’t know what else we could do. We have to get the Fleet together, before the Death Star can be finished, but I…”_

_She sighs. “It’s so much.”_

_“It’s an imprecise feeling,” Cassian says, quietly._

_It’s fear. And pain. And sorrow. And righteousness. And fury. And resignation._

_And the feeling of having no other choice, dancing forever on the line of hopelessness._

_“And it never goes away,” he says._

In the present, Jyn nods.

“You’ve always been sad,” she murmurs. “Even when you’re happy, you… You internalize everything, and you get quiet, and the thing is… you already told me all of this. On Lah’mu. Do you remember?”

_“I get insomnia, and I don’t sleep for days. I’ve been sad, in one way or another, for a very long time, and I probably always will be. There will be days where I refuse to talk to anyone, including you, and days where I’ll snap at you for no good reason. I’m not… I’m not always a pleasant person to be around, Jyn.”_

“I can’t believe you remember that,” Cassian mutters.

It’d been ten years earlier, six months after they first met.

When they were introducing themselves, when he thought he should warn Jyn about who he really was, before they got too tangled up in the other.

When he still thought his sadness was tied only to the war, and because he didn’t believe the war would ever end, he believed he would always be sad.

(But the war did end; so why is he still sad?)

“I was trying to understand you,” Jyn says.

Cassian thinks this is something _he’s_ still trying to do now.

“I’m trying to learn how to live with it,” Cassian says. “Duval is helping me, and I’m also just… Just trying to figure out who I am without the war, and I…”

“I know.”

“I didn’t… I didn’t realize that it’s possible I’ll always be like this. Even during peacetime, even when I’m no longer fighting. And I’m scared about what that means for Fima. And for you.”

A short silence falls.

Cassian looks out the window. It isn’t snowing at the moment, but the sky is an ugly, wretchedly dark gray, filled with heavy clouds, promising a night storm.

Jyn’s voice brings him back.

“You loved your mother very much, didn’t you?”

Cassian looks at her.

“Of course,” he says, and this has always been true.

“Even now, when you know that maybe part of why you’re sad is because of something genetic she gave you.”

Cassian can see where she’s going with this. “Jyn--”

“It isn’t your fault, if Fima’s sad like you, any more than it was Serafima’s fault for you.”

“And what about you?”

Jyn frowns. “What about me?”

“I might always be like… like this,” Cassian says. “Depressed, and skittish, and anxious, and quiet, and… I might not get _better_.”

“But you have.”

“What?”

“You’re _here_ ,” Jyn says, and she smiles. “You came back, and you’re staying. You’re actively working on your mental health, and you’re being patient with yourself, and with _me_ , and you’re being honest and open. This is _better_ , Cassian. This is so much better than you used to be.”

She sounds so positive, so certain, and Cassian can’t help but be surprised at this trust.

“You believe me, when I tell you I’m staying with you,” he says.

“I’m getting there,” Jyn murmurs. “But I think… I do believe you when you say you love me.”

She lifts her free hand, resting it on the table, and taps the finger adorned with the Cassiano family ring.

“Do you remember what you said to me when you gave me this?”

Cassian said a lot when he gave Jyn the ring that had once belonged to Serafima Cassiano, while they sat on a beach on Sernpidal, a day after Shara Bey’s funeral.

“You said I was your family,” Jyn presses.

“Yes.”

“And this ring was the only thing of Serafima’s you’ve ever had,” Jyn continues. “Given to you by the very last of her family. And Serafima… You loved her so much. Yet, you… You didn’t even hesitate to give her ring to me. You _immediately_ gave it to me. Like… Like it was the obvious thing to do, like there was nothing else you could do with it.”

“Yeah,” Cassian says, slowly, a little lost.

“Not everyone would see it that way.”

“You’re my family now,” Cassian says. “It makes sense you should have the thing that defined family for my mother.” He pauses, and adds, “I think your mother’s necklace can be a promise. I’ve said that. And I think my mother’s ring can mean something similar, for you. A promise that I’m staying here, with you.”

Jyn nods.

“Yeah,” she murmurs. “I see.”

Cassian leans over, and presses a kiss to her cheek.

“I love you,” he says. “I’m not leaving you.”

“Yeah,” Jyn says, and when he looks at her, he sees her gaze is vulnerable, sees she’s looking at him with something hesitant, something wary.

Something like hope.

It’s new. It’s better.

“Eat,” he says, nodding at the bowl of stew. “Before it gets cold.”

“You’re sure you’re not hungry?”

He nods. “Just tired, I think.”

“Me, too,” Jyn says. She picks up her spoon, but hesitates, looking at Cassian. “I know you won’t eat, but would you still just… Stay here?”

Cassian smiles.

“Sure,” he says, and scoots his chair closer to hers.

“Talk to me.”

“About what?”

She considers. “Tell me a funny story about your family. Did you ever meet Nerezza’s girlfriend?”

“The first one? I didn’t. But Zeferino came home from school one day and walked in on Nerezza and her girlfriend, uh… Together. In the front room.”

“Bet he was very cool about that.”

“According to Ezza, he ran screaming from the house.”

Jyn laughs, nearly spilling her bowl of soup, and Cassian smiles.

This, he thinks, is close to happy.

But he also know what he is going to tell Duval, the next time he sees him:

_I’m not sure I’ve ever been happy, like Jyn. Like most people, really._

_And I think my mother was like this, too._

_But I think you already guessed that._

_I think this is why you wanted me to think about why my mother and I are gray._

_I think you know what’s wrong with me. I think you’ve suspected it for a while._

_Now I want you to tell me what’s wrong with me._

_And I want to know how to fix it. If it can be fixed. If_ I _can be fixed._

_My mother died without fixing her melancholy. I don’t want this to be me._

_If anything, I want to know how to fix it, so if Fima is like me, if Fima is gray, I can tell him._

_So one of us can have more than the melancholy._

_And if it can only be one of us; it must be him._

_And if I can’t fix me--if it’s too late for me--_

_Then I want to know how to live with it._

 

* * *

 

They go to bed early, after Jyn has finished her bowl of stew, and Cassian has put the leftovers away. Jyn runs a hand over her stomach and hisses at Fima, at his apparently ambitious movements, and Cassian laughs, and watches her fall asleep.

The sky is pitch black, but they can hear the clouds rumbling, a guarantee of a storm.

Cassian stares at the swirling sky, and falls asleep to the noise of thunder.

He doesn’t dream, which is somewhat unusual for him.

Also unusual is Jyn’s elbow in his gut, a more violent move than necessary; Cassian is a light sleeper, and very easy to wake up with just a word.

He blinks up at the ceiling, and then turns his head.

Jyn is sitting up stock-straight, and her eyes are wide, and her hands are pressed tightly to her stomach.

“Jyn?”

They hadn’t drawn the curtains, and so Cassian can see the dark sky outside, can see the hard gray snowflakes whipping past the window, bumping into the glass, splattering ice against the window in a disjointed pattern. It’s a snowstorm, and a violent one at that.

Jyn breathes for a moment, and then she turns to Cassian.

“Cass,” she whispers. “It’s… I think. Fima. It’s time.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As it turns out, this story is the most personal story of the Nonsense, to me, the author.
> 
> Every story of the Nonsense has described/mentioned this perpetual sadness of Cassian's, and many characters have commented on it. Cassian has stated, more than once, that he is sad, and has always been sad, and that he thinks this is just an aspect of his personality. Jyn agrees with him on this.
> 
> This story is taking this "personality trait" and making it more explicit, and explaining what it is, exactly, and what it means for Cassian and Jyn's future, and their child(ren).
> 
> [This story includes the tag "Depression" and it is not for funsies.]
> 
> Re:, Cassian's somewhat violent reaction to the memory of Serafima telling him he shares her melancholy: realizing you are not the only one in your family who has the sadness can be shocking. Especially if that person who passed it to you is dead, and you do not get to ask them about it anymore. It's a lifeline, but it isn't connected to anything anymore.
> 
> Serafima's quiet nature, her loneliness, is repeatedly mentioned in GRAY AREAS, as this is how Cassian knows her. As an adult, he mostly remembers her apologizing to him, though he's somewhat unclear why she apologized so much. In AMOR FATI, he comes to believe she only frequently apologized to him for the dissolution of her marriage, and not being around much. (These are the reasons presented in GRAY AREAS.) This story suggests she apologized to him for the melancholy, too, but it was something Cassian didn't understand; he forgot.
> 
> The Zastiga flashback occurred in AMOR FATI. Cassian's short summary of his problematic "personality traits" occurred in YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS.
> 
> The Bothan food place where Serafima worked is repeatedly mentioned, though never visited, in the first part of GRAY AREAS. GRAY AREAS is also the only Nonsense story where Serafima, Nerezza, and Zeferino appear (alive). I miss Nerezza like she's a person. I mean, it would have been very neat to see Jyn meet Serafima, but holy shit, Jyn and Nerezza would've gotten along like a house on fire.
> 
> "Gray" and "moon" were also repeated themes/motifs/symbols throughout GRAY AREAS, and get expanded on similarly in this story.
> 
> The second half of this story is Jyn's perspective, and takes us to the Epilogue of AMOR FATI, and beyond.


	4. depth over distance every time, my dear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Tell me about Cassian."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Depth Over Distance" by Ben Howard, from KEEP YOUR HEAD UP.
> 
> Apologies in advance for the Longest Author's Note In The World there at the end. But this chapter demands one, I think.

**_11 ABY_ **

“Thank you for agreeing to meet with me, Jyn.”

Cassian had never described Eranas Duval to Jyn, but she thinks, looking at the counselor now, that he looks as she’d expected, more or less. About twenty years older than Jyn, with a dark beard sprinkled with gray, and sharp, inquisitive eyes. He has a paper notepad in his lap, poised to take notes down on.

“Of course,” Jyn says, finally responding to Duval.

“I know you’re very busy. I’d like to offer my congratulations, on the birth of your son.”

“Thanks,” Jyn says, and she can’t contain the smile that crosses her face.

Fima is three months old today, and currently with Cassian, back in their apartment. This is not Jyn’s first time away from Fima, but she still feels a little nervous, and anxious, with the distance, even though Cassian is more than capable of taking care of Fima for the few hours she’s gone to meet with Duval.

“Cassian was surprised you decided to give Fima his surname.”

Jyn fights the urge to roll her eyes.

“I inherited my father’s surname, and Cassian inherited his father’s surname,” she says. “And the vast majority of children on Fest have their father’s surname. That’s the tradition. And my son is Festian, and he’s going to be raised on Fest, so he’s going to have that tradition.”

He also has a middle name, which is still a somewhat foreign concept to Jyn. Both Cassian and Amaia insist middle names are a Festian tradition, just something they do here.

Duval nods, looking thoughtful.

“But Cassian suggested Fima should have your surname,” Duval says.

“Cassian has a really low opinion of Andor men,” Jyn replies. “With his father, and his brother…”

“ _My father was a Separatist devotee who abandoned my mother, and my siblings, and me, and died when I was a child, and I barely ever got to know him. And my brother was an Imperial who shot me, and might have murdered my sister. Andor men are consistently the worst. Let the name die with me, for all I care.”_

It was a speech he’d given Jyn a long time ago, long before Fima had become a possibility, but Cassian had retained the beliefs over the years.

“And himself, too,” Jyn muses, because even if Cassian hadn’t said it in the same speech, she’s quite sure Cassian’s inherent distrust and general dislike of Andor men includes himself.

“Yes,” Duval says, agreeing with Jyn’s opinion of Cassian’s evident self-hatred.

“We compromised,” Jyn says. “Fima has my surname for his middle name, so. That might’ve helped. I dunno. Cassian thinks Fima is going to be more like me, than him. He hopes this, anyway.”

But Fima is still Cassian’s son, and Jyn had seen no real reason to deny him his father’s name, not when it was tradition, not when Cassian is repeatedly promising Jyn that he’ll be here, to be a father for Fima.

If Cassian hadn’t come back, then maybe Jyn would’ve given Fima her surname. Maybe.

This isn’t an alternate universe she’d really like to explore, and so she bites her lip.

“How are you feeling, Jyn? Nervous?”

Perhaps her anxiety is more apparent than she’d thought. Or perhaps Duval is simply an observant counselor.

“I’m fine,” Jyn replies. “Cassian said it was important that I talk to you.”

“Yes,” Duval says. “But I’d prefer you to feel a little more comfortable around me, first. Tell me about your son.”

“You really want to hear about Fima?” Jyn checks, and Duval nods.

“Very much so.”

This time, Jyn’s smile is wide.

She could talk about Fima all day. She is not nervous to talk about Fima.

“He’s… He’s amazing,” she says, gushingly, her voice sounding almost horrifically cheery and enthusiastic, but she just can’t help it. “He’s just… He smiles all the time, he recognizes me, he reaches for me, he… I love him so much. And I think he loves me.”

Jyn has never loved anything like she loves Fima.

She’s loved him for months now, loved him from the second she knew he was going to exist, but seeing him, holding him, touching him, is something else entirely.

He’s undeniably _real_ now.

He’s undeniably _hers_.

“You sound very happy,” Duval notes.

“I am,” Jyn says, and she is.

She has Fima, her son, her own child, and she never thought she’d have one. And she has Cassian, still, impossibly; trying very hard for her, trying to be better, trying to stay. And the war is over, and it’s peacetime.

She doesn’t remember the last time she felt this happy. It’s quite possible she’s simply never been this happy.

“I’m glad to hear it,” Duval says. He fiddles with the papers on his lap for a moment, and Jyn isn’t sure if this is a pointed movement, designed to make Jyn relax if Duval appears hesitant as well, or if Duval is simply unsure how to begin. She doesn’t know him well enough to know which is more likely.

After a moment, Duval looks up at her.

“Cassian says Fima is bright,” Duval says. “And he doesn’t mean bright as in smart, though I don’t doubt Fima is also smart. But he means bright as in _light_. He’s described this light about Fima, that looking at him is like looking at something that shines, something innately glowing. Cassian says this brightness of Fima’s is very much like the one he sees in you, Jyn.”

Jyn swallows, fights the urge to fiddle with the ring around her finger, and nods.

“Do you know what Cassian means when he says you’re bright, Jyn?”

“Yes,” Jyn says. “He’s, uh. He’s told me this before. And he’s told me that he thinks Fima is the same as me.”

He’d said it recently, while watching Fima sleep.

“And you understand the significance of this, for someone like Cassian Andor.”

Jyn hesitates.

There is a soft, knowing look in Duval’s eyes, and it makes her nervous, and unsure. She doesn’t think Duval is trying to trick her, or test her; he’s only looking for her honesty, her gut instinct, her initial response to his words, without over-thinking them.

She doesn’t think there are any _wrong_ answers here; but there might be some incorrect ones.

Duval takes pity on her hesitation. He folds his hands in his lap.

“Tell me about Cassian.”

Jyn stares.

“I, uh… What?”

“Tell me about Cassian,” Duval repeats. “I’ve been meeting with Cassian for about eight months now. During that time, I’ve tried to understand him, tried to counsel him, tried to offer him the advice and support he needs. And Cassian has been improving. Absolutely. And he’s eager to take the next step, which is why I’ve asked you to meet me. I’d like to hear about Cassian, from your perspective.”

“This is the next step?” Jyn asks, flummoxed.

“Cassian insists no one knows him better than you do,” Duval says. “That he has very few secrets you don’t know; and we both know the kinds of secrets a longtime spy like Cassian would have. He’s very sure about you. And, with the uncertainty of his new, post-war life, that makes you about the only thing he’s certain of. Save for Fima, of course.”

“Of course,” Jyn repeats.

Duval smiles. “I have permission from Cassian to talk to you about some of the things he and I have discussed over the last five months. But I assure you, Jyn, anything and everything you say to me will be kept confidential.”

“What do you _think_ I’m going to say?”

“I don’t know,” Duval says, and he sounds honest, and Jyn regrets her automatic hostility. “But I thought you’d want to know I won’t repeat anything. Not if you don’t want me to.”

Jyn nods, and turns to look out the window.

It’s snowing today, naturally, because it snows most days on Fest. The snow outside the window is all gray, coming down in large, fluffy flakes, and she hopes that if Fima is awake, that Cassian is pointing out the snow to him, safe on the other side of the glass.

She looks back at Duval.

“You want me to talk about Cassian,” she says. “Where should I begin?”

“How about at the beginning. How did you meet?”

“Hasn’t Cassian gone over this?”

“I’d like to hear it from you.”

From her perspective; she supposes this is fair.

“I met Cassian almost eleven years ago,” she says. “The Alliance broke me out of an Imperial labor camp, and took me to their main base on Yavin 4. They needed me to complete a mission for them, something that only I could do. In exchange, they’d let me go free. Cassian was the officer they assigned to accompany me.”

Duval nods, and doesn’t write any of this down.

“What did you think of him when you first saw him?”

Jyn blinks, and takes herself back ten years, to that command room in the Yavin 4 base.

_The chair is hard and unyielding underneath her, and she blinks, trying to school her expression into something approximating hard and unyielding. She looks around the room, keeping her gaze cool, and she spots a woman dressed in head to toe white, an older man dressed in a tan, vaguely-military looking uniform, and dozens of soldiers, running around the room, speaking in low tones. She’s seated in front of some kind of command table, though it’s been cleared of anything noteworthy, and though there are maps and star charts littering the room, she can’t recognize anything, and she has no idea where she is._

_Jyn fights the fear that threatens to sliver up her throat, keeping her eyes darting around the space, until she feels a set of eyes staring hard at her._

_To her left, she spots a tall, young man, leaning casually against a green-lined command board, arms crossed, eyeing her. His expression has been wiped clean; he could be thinking anything. But he meets her eyes, without fear, without hesitation, and he looks back at her, quite calmly, and she stares, hard, looking for something._

_Looking for anything._

_Dark brown eyes, devoid of light, devoid of anything, save for a flicker of something when he blinks._

_Something calculating._

_She suddenly feels like he’s looking straight through her, like he’s looking at something else; something that he cannot forget, something he has not been allowed to forget._

_A reason to be there, maybe._

_He’s standing right there. This fact is undeniable. He is in the room. He’s breathing. He’s alive._

_So why does he look like something that should not be there?_

“Do you know what a revenant is?”

Duval blinks at Jyn’s question.

“Creatures that appear in myths and folklore in several systems,” Duval says. “Including Fest. Here, they are people who have died and returned to haunt the living. Most stories on Fest have them as a kind of ghost, looking for revenge, crawling out of the ice and snow to come back to the living.”

“Right,” Jyn says. “When I was a teenager, I lived on Serralonis. For a few years. And they had legends about revenants. They were ghost stories, and I was a soldier, and it was… I heard a lot of the stories around campfires, in between missions. They talked about them as creatures that looked human, but weren’t. Really thin, with sunken eyes, hollow cheeks, boney hands, sallow skin. Nothing more than an animated corpse, really.”

Duval is taking notes now.

“I never put much stock in it,” Jyn murmurs. “But the stories were entertaining. The Serralonians believed revenants were people who’d been cursed while they were alive, so when they died, they felt unfinished, and couldn’t be put to rest. Aside from the description I just said, there was another way to recognize a revenant; the eyes. They said it was all in the eyes. Some kind of drive.”

_Dark brown eyes, devoid of light, devoid of anything, save for a flicker of something when he blinks._

_Something calculating._

“I never thought revenants might be real,” Jyn says, “Until I met Cassian.”

Duval nods, and he looks very interested.

“Were you scared of him?”

Jyn almost laughs. “No. Revenants, or at least in Serralonian culture, won’t bother the living who they don’t have any prior history with. Cassian might’ve been undead, but whatever was tying him to life wasn’t my problem. So, no. I wasn’t afraid of him.”

“How long did you think he might’ve been a revenant?”

“I didn’t…” Jyn sighs, rolling her eyes. “I didn’t _really_ think he was a mythological creature. Not really. He just reminded me of one. And once he started talking, I knew he wasn’t dead. He had some emotion in his voice. Even if it was… all anger, more or less, it was emotion. Revenants don’t have that.”

And Cassian did, eventually, have a hint of light in his eyes.

Walking towards her, in the hangar of the Yavin 4 base, the soldiers that would make up Rogue One running around them, looking for anything and everything they could carry to Scarif.

Cassian, with a soft, barely there smile, and gentle brown eyes that might’ve loved someone, once.

_Welcome home._

“I see,” Duval says. “So you weren’t afraid. Indifferent, maybe?”

“Sure,” Jyn says. “I… I’d been on my own for a while. I wasn’t… I didn’t care about anyone else. And that was fine with me. I saw Cassian as a means to an end, and I know he thought the same about me. He needed me to help him, and in exchange, I’d get to go free. Seemed fair.”

Duval considers this, and Jyn is quite sure he’s curious about the mission she and Cassian were on. Cassian knows that Jyn never speaks of Galen Erso’s connection to the Death Star, knows she never tells anyone exactly what her father’s work entailed, and she trusts that Cassian would not share this secret now, not even with his trauma counselor.

Jyn thinks she’s forgiven Galen, more or less; but she’s still very much ashamed.

She thinks of Fima, of her three month old son, and wonders how she can possibly tell him the truth about his grandfather.

She has time to figure it out, at least.

“You and Cassian are quite interesting,” Duval says, unexpectedly, and Jyn looks up at him. “The way you describe your first meeting, it’s similar, but slightly different. And how you saw the other is _very_ different.”

“Cassian thought I was bright,” Jyn says.

“He called you a wildfire.”

“No wonder he was staring at me,” Jyn says, and she can’t help but snort a laugh. “A _wildfire_. That’s the kind of thing that would’ve gotten his attention.”

“So you do understand the significance of Cassian calling you bright.”

Jyn looks at Duval.

“Cassian did tell you,” she mutters. “I know him better than anyone else does.” She shakes her head, and adds, “And I have a three month old son at home, and I can’t be away from him for long, and so I have to ask: why am I here, exactly?”

Duval looks at Jyn, and she holds his gaze, keeping her head high, projecting assurance and confidence even though she is anything but.

Cassian had asked her to meet with Duval, had said that there was something Jyn needed to know that Cassian felt Duval could explain better.

She doesn’t know what this could be.

She suspects nothing good.

After a moment, Duval nods, and flips through the notepad on his lap.

“The first time you saw Cassian, you thought he was a revenant, because of how _dead_ he seemed to you,” Duval says. “And the first time he saw you, he was struck by how _alive_ you were. You made him feel wistful; to see something so vibrant, and resilient… It was startling to him, because it was something he hadn’t been in a long time.”

Jyn nods.

“Have you ever heard of melancholia, Jyn?”

“Uh, it’s a word,” Jyn says, slowly. “A synonym for sadness?”

“You’re not wrong,” Duval agrees. “But I’m speaking of something a little more serious. Melancholia is a psychiatric term for a mental condition, an illness, one where the person who has it experiences constant, and insistent, sadness. It manifests in other ways, too; with paranoia, and agitation, self-hatred, beliefs of cynicism and pessimism, occasionally even psychosis. Insomnia is not uncommon, and another symptom of melancholia is waking early in the morning. The individual, when feeling guilt, feels it excessively, to the point it warps every other emotion, cancelling them out. There are physical symptoms too, including a lack of appetite, and trembling. Melancholia can be tied closely to anxiety, occurring as hysteria, or panic attacks. It is genetic, and a chronic, lifelong condition.”

Silence falls, following this speech from Duval.

Jyn stares out the window, though she’s aware of the counselor’s eyes on her.

“And this is what you think Cassian has,” she murmurs.

“I did go to medical school,” Duval says. “I’m a trained psychiatrist, and I specialized in forms of trauma.” At Jyn’s surprised look, he smiles and adds, “Most of my patients don’t require psychiatry, and many find it easier to refer to me as a _counselor,_ rather than a psychiatrist. There’s an unfortunate stigma around psychiatry.”

Jyn supposes this is fair. She nods, and Duval continues.

“Travia Chan, when she referred Cassian to me, said that Cassian was a lifelong soldier looking for counseling, to deal with the trauma of the war. I’ve treated a dozen soldiers with similar backgrounds. But Cassian is… different. Depression from the war is not uncommon, but Cassian’s… It’s very specific. And he’s had it for a _very_ long time, even before the war. Melancholia does exist in children, but it’s difficult to diagnose, especially on Fest, where melancholia is not common. Depression, sure; but not melancholia. I expect most people just thought he was a quiet, careful, thoughtful child. That any sadness he might feel was the result of the death of his father, or the war. But…”

“You think he was… melancholic, even then?”

“From the way he describes himself as a child, it seems possible.” Duval hesitates, and adds, “Don’t be mistaken; Cassian’s time in the war also influenced his mental health. It worsened it, exacerbated it. But it very likely masked the melancholia for what it really was. It was easy for Cassian to explain away his persistent sadness when he was fighting, but since he’s stopped… I initially began treatment as I would for any other shellshocked soldier. But that’s incorrect.”

“Because it isn’t just the shellshock,” Jyn surmises, and Duval nods.

“I’ve been treating him for that, of course. But melancholia is different.”

“Can you treat it?”

“Me? Certainly,” Duval says. “Like I said, I’m a psychiatrist. It’s possible to treat melancholia. To alleviate the symptoms. But melancholia is lifelong. This is how it differs from depression, which _can_ be lifelong, but is also curable, in some cases. Melancholia is never fully cured. It is not something he will ever fully recover from. I told Cassian all of this, and he strongly believed you should be aware, too.”

Jyn takes this in.

“He won’t… Get better?”

“He will,” Duval says, firmly. “As long as he’s committed to treatment, and recovery, he will get _better_. And so far, he’s done a remarkable job with it. But he won’t ever be cured. He’ll never be truly happy, not like how most people are. Not like you, Jyn.”

And this, Jyn thinks, was why Cassian thought she should talk to Duval.

He thought she should know about the melancholia, and what it meant. For him; and for her.

“But he’s… He _is_ happy,” Jyn says, and her voice shakes a little.

When Fima was born, Cassian was so happy, he cried. And Cassian smiles at Jyn, and he holds Fima, and he takes time to talk to the children in the orphanage, to make them laugh. He kisses the living daylights out of Jyn, and he’s content to sit and grin at Fima for hours, and he tells them both that he loves them everyday.

“As close as he can be,” Duval says, gently. “He is happy, but not in a way you would recognize, if you felt as he did.”

Jyn feels like she might cry.

She plays with the ring around her finger, to try to distract herself.

“Is there anything I can do?” she asks.

“From what I hear, you’re doing everything you can,” Duval says, and he sounds perhaps more optimistic than he has during this entire meeting. “It sounds like you’ve been doing a lot for ten years now. Cassian says that you accept him, that you’ve forgiven him for being the way he is. And that’s exactly what he needs to hear.”

Jyn swallows hard, forcing the tears down.

“Why, uh, why Cassian?” she asks. “I mean, erm, why does he… have this. I’ve never heard of melancholia as an illness, I just… Why _him?_ ”

“We don’t know why it occurs, but there are some common factors,” Duval explains. “Including genetic. And from how Cassian has described his mother, from his memories of her, and their interactions, it sounds like she suffered from melancholia as well.”

And this had been a possibility Jyn and Cassian had discussed the day before Fima was born, that Cassian’s sadness might’ve been something he inherited from Serafima, along with her smile, and her eyes.

But they had thought it was a personality trait; they hadn’t known it was a _condition_ , an _illness_.

“I understand that Cassian’s mother was from Sernpidal, and there is an, er, unusual thing about melancholia and Sernpidal,” Duval says. “And this influenced my diagnosis of melancholia rather than depression. Sernpidal has an unusually high number of cases of two diseases; Quannot’s Syndrome, and Sernpidalian melancholia.”

“Cassian’s grandparents died from Quannot’s,” Jyn says, remembering what Cassian had told her about Serafima’s family, the Cassianos, when he’d visited Sernpidal for the first time, to see Shara Bey and Kes Dameron, and to try to locate any Cassiano relatives.

Quannot’s Syndrome, the illness that had killed Shara Bey. A truly terrible illness, a disease that causes debilitating and extreme pain, attacking muscles, organs, and nerves. There is no cure, and is usually fatal within a year.

A disease with no known cause, but, it’s thought, might have a genetic link. It runs in Shara’s family. And it runs in the Cassianos.

“He’s told me,” Duval says. “Sernpidal has such a small population of humans that it’s horrifically under-studied. But there is some literature about Quannot’s and melancholia, suggesting a correlation between the two.”

Jyn thinks this makes sense, in an awful way. One disease to wrack the body with excruciating pain; one to numb the mind with inescapable sadness.

“But I implore you, Jyn, this in no way guarantees Cassian will contract Quannot’s,” Duval adds. “It only means his melancholia is the version found on Sernpidal; Sernpidalian melancholia. I’ve been in contact with a couple psychiatrists there, to try to learn more. I am optimistic this connection will be a good thing, for Cassian, to understand his melancholia better, and to treat it more aggressively.”

“What’s the difference between… Sernpidalian melancholia, and regular melancholia? Or depression, I...?”

She’s a little lost.

Distantly, she wonders if Cassian feels like this all the time.

“Sernpidalian melancholia is a variant of melancholia,” Duval says, gently, and Jyn imagines Cassian peppered him with similar questions when he first explained the diagnosis. “It’s distinguishable at a molecular level, requiring a simple DNA test for a diagnosis. Initially, I thought Cassian had depression, but after he mentioned his mother was from Sernpidal, I tested him for the melancholia strain from Sernpidal, and it came back positive. Sernpidalian melancholia is virtually identical to melancholia, save for the fact it is unusually common on Sernpidal, and diagnosed at a genetic level. And melancholia differs from depression in that it is exclusively genetic, and also incurable.”

“Sure, sure,” Jyn mumbles.

So Quannot’s is genetic, and might be a thing Cassian inherited from his maternal grandparents, along with his Sernpidalian melancholia, inherited from his mother, and these are two horrible genetic things that might also be found, in this very moment, in--

“Fima,” Jyn begins, and hesitates.

“It’s impossible to know,” Duval says, voice still so gentle. “It is something to be mindful of, sure, but there is no guarantee Fima will develop melancholia. It’s genetic, but there are other factors, and Fima might not be exposed to these like Cassian was. War, for example.”

Jyn nods, and for a moment, her fear is appeased.

Fima will not be exposed to war.

She remembers Cassian’s words, five months before:

_“And that’s something I love about you. How bright you are. It’s always been so much to me, looking at someone so bright. It’s a lot. I’m not bright, not at all, and you’re light. I hope Fima is bright like you.”_

She can’t help but hope that Fima is bright like her, too, if it means he gets to escape the melancholia that has plagued Cassian his whole life.

She expects Cassian feels the same way.

“It won’t kill him, will it?” she asks.

“Not in the same way a disease like cancer or Quannot’s would,” Duval says. “It does not physically attack the body, like those illnesses. Suicidal ideation is definitely something to look out for, and be mindful of, but… It is very possible to live a long, fulfilling life with melancholia.”

And this is some good news, at last.

Jyn has received bad news so many times over her life, has heard it all. She watched both her parents die, and she watched Cassian walk away from her to what they both thought would be his death. She’s seen her home go up in flames multiple times. She’s seen friends die on battlefields, in starfighters, in back alleys. She’s almost died, more times than she cares to remember.

But this bad news, this revelation, is something different.

“He doesn’t deserve this,” she mumbles.

Cassian has done a lot of horrible, devastating things in his life. He’s killed hundreds of people, some of them bad, some of them simply collateral, some of them close to innocent, but needed to be dead for the sake of the cause. He’s tortured before, and been tortured. He’s stolen, and been stolen from. He’s torn families apart, and had his own torn apart.

He doesn’t believe it’s possible to atone for any of this. Any of the things he’s done.

But he’s trying to, anyway.

Trying to be a better person, through working with the children in the orphanage, mentoring them, listening to their fears, offering them a shoulder to cry on, sharing with them his own similarly tragic backstory. Trying to be a better person, through helping Jyn and Amaia with the running of the orphanage, through volunteering his knowledge of Imperial bombs and strategy to help Travia Chan and the government of Fest dismantle any remaining explosive devices leftover from the war.

Trying to be a better person, by coming back to Jyn, and staying with her.

Trying to be a better person, by being a more devoted father to Fima than his father was to him.

Cassian deserves peacetime, deserves to rest.

She wants to help him achieve that.

She wants to help him be as happy as he can possibly be.

He’s trying to do that for her.

Duval is watching her carefully.

“You aren’t too surprised by this,” he notes.

“Cassian has always been sad,” Jyn says. “I just, um… I didn’t know it was a condition.”

“Cassian didn’t either,” Duval notes. “Melancholia is relatively uncommon, but depression is not, yet both are rarely discussed. There’s shame, stigma around them both, though there definitely shouldn’t be.”

Jyn stares out the window.

She watches the gray snow fall.

 

* * *

 

**_4 ABY_ **

Jyn wakes slowly, to the feeling of a hand running through her hair.

She blinks, frowning up at the ceiling, and then she turns her head.

Cassian smiles at her.

She sits up straight, and throws her arms around him, nearly knocking him from his perch on the edge of the bed. He laughs, and returns her hug, and keeps his balance.

“Did you miss me?” he asks, unnecessarily.

“Cass,” Jyn breathes. He still smells of starfighter fuel, and his jacket is cold to the touch, and she can see his bag on the floor by his feet.  “When did you get back?”

“About an hour ago. I just got out of debriefing.”

He’d been on a reconnaissance trip to Ilum, following vague reports of Imperial movements on the planet.

It was their first time apart since they’d gotten married.

“How did it go?”

“Oh, fine,” Cassian says, shrugging, and he leans back a little to meet Jyn’s eyes, lifting a hand to touch her cheek. She holds his other hand tightly in hers. “The reports of Imperial movements were outdated. The Empire had been there, but it looks like they’d been gone for a while. A year or so. They didn’t need what Ilum has to offer anymore.”

Jyn frowns. “What does it have?”

“Funny you should ask.”

Cassian reaches down, and scoops his bag up off the floor.

“Ilum is an arctic planet,” he explains. “Like Hoth, and Fest.”

“You must’ve felt right at home then.”

“I am more comfortable there than most would be,” he agrees, digging through his bag. “But unlike Hoth, and Fest, Ilum has something uniquely valuable under all the ice. Something the Empire needed a year ago, but not anymore. Any guesses?”

Jyn frowns, bewildered. “Cass, I don’t--”

She breaks off, when Cassian pulls his hand out of his bag, and shows Jyn what he’d been looking for. What the Empire had been digging up on Ilum.

In Cassian’s palm is a kyber crystal.

“Oh,” Jyn whispers.

The Empire would’ve needed kyber crystals a year ago, to power the Second Death Star.

“Yeah,” Cassian says, and then tips the kyber crystal into Jyn’s open palm.

Like Lyra Erso’s kyber crystal, this one is uncolored, and slightly scratched. It’s also round like Lyra’s was, though a little longer, and a little more clouded. And it also has a cord tied around it, like Lyra Erso’s.

Jyn can recognize all this, because she can see Lyra’s kyber crystal at this very moment: hanging on its cord around Cassian’s neck, resting on his shirt.

She’d given it to him four weeks ago, on their wedding day.

“It’s for you,” Cassian says, and when Jyn jerks her head up to stare at him, he adds, “Partially to replace the one you gave to me, but also because… Because I know how important your kyber crystal was to you, and how it reminds you of your family, and I want you to remember that you have me.”

“Cass,” Jyn tries, and she blinks quickly, feeling very overwhelmed.

Cassian smiles.

“I think about you, whenever I remember I have this,” he says, gesturing at the crystal around his neck. “I think it’s important you have something similar.”

“Yup,” Jyn manages, and that’s about as far as she’s able to articulate how she’s feeling.

She bows her head, and shoves her hair out of the way, and lets Cassian tie the cord around her neck.

It feels a little like coming home, having a kyber crystal around her neck again.

She holds this one in her hand, getting used to the weight of it, and then she looks back up at Cassian.

He has a soft, gentle, almost vulnerable look on his face; like he’s scared, or anxious, or overwhelmed. Like he’s so happy he’s circled back around to being sad, because he thinks they are not going to last, even here, even now, when they’re really just starting.

Like he thinks he doesn’t deserve her, or any of the joy of this moment.

“I love you,” she says, and his eyes brighten, and she dives forward to kiss his uncertainty away.

 

* * *

 

**_11 ABY_ **

Jyn takes a train back to the apartment.

The snow has stopped falling, and the train clicks smoothly over the tracks, and the city looks quiet and sleepy.

Jyn is anything but.

She does feel tired, but she also feels driven. Determined.

A little like how she felt when she decided to go to Scarif, to steal the Death Star plans.

She feels like she’s standing on the precipice of the impossible, but with a wild, reckless hope that she can traverse it anyway.

She goes home.

The apartment is quiet, when she walks inside, carefully shaking the snow off her boots and hanging her coat up in the front hall closet. She walks to the front room, and this is where she finds Fima, asleep in his bassinet by the window, and Cassian, sitting on the floor next to him, watching his son sleep.

Cassian turns his head when he hears her, and the two of them look at each other.

There are no lights on in the apartment, but there is plenty of light gray sunlight filtering in through the window.

Slowly, mindful of the sleeping baby, Cassian gets to his feet.

He swallows.

“Jyn, I--”

But he breaks off, as Jyn crosses the ten or so feet between them, to jump into his arms.

Cassian staggers for a moment, but regains his balance, and clutches her tightly to him.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, and his voice is a croak.

“No,” Jyn says, and her voice matches his. “No, don’t you dare. You have nothing to apologize for.” She hesitates, and then firmly adds, “Not to me. Not anymore.”

She can feel him trembling in her arms.

“I forgive you,” she reminds him. “I forgive you for leaving me. I’ve told you that. And this, the melancholia… Of course you don’t have to apologize for that.”

“You don’t deserve any of this.”

And by that, he means, _You deserve better than me_.

And Jyn, because she knows him better than anyone else, translates this.

But Cassian isn’t done.

“If this… You didn’t sign up for this,” he murmurs. “You didn’t know there was something… something actually _wrong_ with me, with my brain, and I… I understand if you can’t do this. If it’s… I don’t know what we are, exactly, but we can just be friends, we can just be Fima’s parents. I can move out. We never have to be… anything more, not like we used to be. Duval warned me, he said it can be hard for people to love someone with melancholia, because we… We’re pessimistic, and irritable, and depressing, and it’s… If you have to go, Jyn, I understand.”

He’s giving her an out.

He thinks that this, this revelation, will be what makes Jyn leave. That after almost eleven years, this is where Jyn decides she has had enough. This is where she gives up.

But Jyn has never once wanted to leave Cassian.

And she isn’t about to go now.

“I’m choosing you,” she says, and her voice hardens, her decision firm. “I’m choosing _you_ , Cassian. With your… With your melancholia, and your trauma, and your past, and everything. I want it. I want you. I chose you a long time ago. I am not leaving you. I’m with you. Fima, and me… We are here for you.”

Cassian holds her more tightly, and she hears him sob, his nose pressed to her shoulder. She rubs her hands over his back.

“All the way,” she says. “I’ve always meant it.”

“I know,” Cassian whispers. “I know, I know.”

“The melancholia, it… Everything Duval told me, it’s just… It’s another way for me to understand you. Why you are the way you are. I’ve always wanted to know who you are.”

“He thinks my mother had it, too,” Cassian says. “And I remember her telling me that she thought her father had it. And Duval thinks it can get set off by things, so for my grandfather it might have been the death of his wife when my mother was a child, and for my mother it might have been her family abandoning her when she was thirteen, and I don’t know what it was for me, if it was the war, or my father dying, or my parents separating, or something even worse that I just can’t remember. Or none of that. Duval said melancholia, it… Sometimes there isn’t a reason for it. Nothing bad happens, it just… People have the gene, and they get it.”

“It’s okay,” Jyn says, holding him tightly.

“I keep thinking that maybe I was wrong about why she moved to Fest,” Cassian continues. “Maybe she liked the gray because it felt like home to someone like her. Someone melancholic. And maybe this is why I love Fest so much, too.”

And Jyn thinks this could very well be true.

“We can get through this,” she murmurs. “Whatever you need. We can get through it.”

“He’s going to put me on something, medication,” Cassian says, speaking quickly. “It has side effects. It might… It might shake up my personality, it might make me _worse,_ it might… It’s going to be very rough, to find the right combination, for me. You need to understand that.”

“We can get through it,” Jyn says, again. “I’m with you. I can take it.”

This will not be what ruins them. Not after everything. Not when Cassian is trying so hard, not when Jyn is trying to meet him halfway. Not this.

“Is it bad if I say I was relieved when he told me about it? Melancholia?” Cassian whispers. “That it felt like an answer? It doesn’t excuse anything I ever did, of course not, but--”

“I know,” Jyn says, because she thinks she does.

It’s a way to understand why he is the way he is, why he thinks the way he does, why he reacts to things as he does, why he solves problems the way he does.

Why he can’t sleep. Why he wakes early in the morning. Why he skips meals. Why he trembles. Why he sits in the dark, in the quiet. Why he finds such comfort in the gray of Fest.

Why he gets stuck on guilt. Why he never believed the war would end. Why he can’t forgive himself.

Why he is so desperately in love with someone who is not sad like him, but bright.

Someone like Jyn.

_And that’s something I love about you. How bright you are._

She swallows, and then she says something else she’s always meant, the limited number of times she’s let herself say it:

“I love you.”

She hears Cassian’s breath catch.

“I’m in love with you,” she adds, and then she begins to cry.

She thinks these tears were a long time coming.

She didn’t cry when Cassian came back to her, after four years, because she couldn’t believe it. Because she couldn’t _allow_ herself to believe it. Because she’d missed him so much. Because she’d never been in love with anyone else.

Cassian has described himself as someone who falls in love very quickly, and very completely.

And Jyn knows she’s someone who falls in love slowly, but entirely.

With everything she has. For good.

And here’s Cassian, who, at long last, has promised to stay with her. Who’s walked away from the cause, from the war, to follow her.

Who’s spent the last eight months trying to prove this to her.

Cassian, who is melancholic, and will always be. Cassian, who is traumatized, who is perpetually guilt-ridden. Cassian, who struggles to forgive himself.

Cassian, who has always forgiven her, for anything and everything.

Cassian, who has, despite everything, despite _himself_ , loved her.

They don’t wear the kyber crystal necklaces anymore. Those are still in the back of their closet, until Fima is older, and he can have the one that once belonged to Lyra Erso.

But they do wear matching gold rings.

The rings don’t mean exactly what the kyber crystals meant. Because for them, the kyber crystals were a way to remember the other, to feel close to the other, when they were separated. A _symbol_ of commitment.

But the rings are a promise. A promise to stay. A _promise_ of commitment.

And Jyn thinks this can be enough.

She thinks this can be better.

Cassian says he is choosing her. And she wants to believe him.

What she knows for sure is that she is choosing him.

“I’m in love with you,” Cassian whispers in her ear, and he kisses her cheek, and Jyn lets herself cry.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hoo boy, alright:
> 
> I'm sorry this chapter was so "Telling, Not Showing" which is like the cardinal sin of writing, but: I have some 400,000 words of Nonsense that Shows examples of Cassian's melancholia, so.
> 
> Sernpidalian melancholia is basically the same as real-life depression, save for: 1) it is exclusively genetic, something you can't get only due to outside factors like environmental; 2) it has a lab test for diagnosis; 3) it is always incurable, and does not occur episodically, but constantly.
> 
> Some of the above factors occur in people with depression, but not all, and for melancholia it's all. Melancholia, back in the day, was what we called Depression; now there are a bunch of sub-types, including melancholic depression, which would not be inaccurate for Cassian.
> 
> The big, main reason I'm calling it melancholia is because Cassian has always called it melancholia, and not depression, throughout the Nonsense, and with the revelation that Serafima also used this word, I thought it might mean that it was a real, specific thing, even if Cassian hadn't known it was. 
> 
> Serafima knew her melancholy was the Sernpidalian melancholia, but she never spelled this out to her son; I think she was waiting until he was older, to tell him what it really meant. She never wanted to burden Cassian with anything; she knew he was already fighting the war. And Serafima's big flaw has always been her pride; she was ashamed of her sadness, what with the mentioned stigma. She never forgave herself for her melancholy.
> 
> Luckily, Cassian still has time to learn to forgive himself.
> 
> Sernpidal already has an established identity in the Nonsense as a Planet With Bad News Diseases, so this also fits. It's a beautiful, warm, sunny planet with bright oceans, and its people are dying.
> 
> In AMOR FATI, Cassian meets a flower-selling Sernpidalian alien who makes a comment about the people of Sernpidal "despairing" and notes Cassian is like them; when Cassian asks how he knows this, he says he was told by Cassian's "Sernpidal eyes." There is something about the Sernpidalian people that is intrinsically sad; the melancholia.
> 
> Depression does seem to exist in STAR WARS; characters in EU books have been mentioned as experiencing a "depressive spell", etc. Schizophrenia and DID have Wookieepedia pages, though depression does not, which also factored into this, uh, more abstract take on depression. (Melancholia agressiva is an Old EU disease but is very specific to one alien race and also just awful; not the same here.)
> 
> I am someone who tends to connect my mental illness to STAR WARS; I have bipolar disorder, type II (did you ever wonder how my 200k Cassian backstory got written in three months? Hello to my sketchy backseat driver, hypomania) which is what Carrie Fisher had, and upon my diagnosis, five years ago, I read everything she'd ever written about it. I cannot begin to describe how life-changing, and life-saving, this was.
> 
> This story features a handful of lifelines, and Carrie Fisher was one of mine.
> 
> But my mental illness is lifelong; I'm guaranteed relapses, and I did have one this past summer, but I was prepared for it, saw the signs, and endured it. I've taken medication, off and on, for five years, but there is no magic cure pill for me to swallow. There's only psychiatry, and family. 
> 
> And a desperate, stubborn drive to survive when I should not.
> 
> And this is Cassian's future, too: making the most of your impossible survival, and thriving, when you should not.
> 
> I want to believe it's possible to have a good life with something incurable and devastating, and I want to read a story where it's possible. And sometimes you gotta write them.
> 
> The main point of this horribly long note is to emphasize that I am not doing this melancholia thing for Dramatic Effect. I never imagined Cassian NOT having melancholia. and this is the one thing with the Nonsense where I'm very confident, personally; I know what I'm writing about, at LAST.
> 
> Other notes:
> 
> -Cassian going to Ilum and getting Jyn a kyber crystal was mentioned in AMOR FATI.
> 
> -The rest of this story is the most horrifically sappy nonsense I've ever written. None of you will ever be able to look at me again.


	5. wherever you're going, i'm going your way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "First date."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Moon River". I prefer the Andy Williams version. Whatever you do, do NOT listen to this song while thinking about the end of ROGUE ONE. DO NOT.

**_11 ABY_ **

“Don’t give me that look.”

Fima blinks up at Jyn, dark brown eyes wide and curious, and if he thinks he can just look at her like that and get away with anything; well, he’s dangerously close to being right.

“Fine, go,” she mutters, and sets him down on the carpet of her office in the orphanage, and she watches her eight and a half month old son begin to crawl around the room speedily.

“I don’t know why you’d rather do this here than at home,” Jyn adds, but Fima gives no explanation. She hadn’t really expected one.

The speed of the crawling is a relatively new thing, and she guesses Fima’s enthusiasm with it has something to do with the novelty of the activity.

There is a knock on the office door, and Jyn expects it’s Amaia, so she calls, “Come in, but be careful, he’s on the move,” and returns to the paperwork she might as well work on if she isn’t going home anytime soon.

“Where does he think he’s going?”

Jyn jerks her head up, startled at the sight of Cassian, closing the door of her office behind him. He crouches on the floor, and smiles as Fima spots him and makes a series of excited noises, hurriedly moving to crawl to his side.

“Hi, Fima,” Cassian says, and carefully scoops him up.

“What are you doing here?” Jyn asks, bewildered but still happy to see him.

He’d gone to the Fulcra City Hall that morning, to work on some sort of project for Travia Chan, translating Mantooian documents for her office, since her translator had called out sick. Jyn had expected to see him at home.

“Finished early,” Cassian explains, carrying Fima over to her, as Fima brushes his fingers over Cassian’s face, his approximation of a proper greeting. “I thought I’d drop by and see the children before going home. Amaia told me you were in here. What are _you_ still doing here?”

“Fima has places to go, and none of them are home,” Jyn says, and Cassian laughs.

He carefully sets Fima back on the floor, and they watch their son immediately move away from them.

“He’s kind of young to want to get away from us, isn’t he?”

“Don’t even joke about that,” Jyn says with a scowl, and Cassian nods, hiding a smirk behind his hand.

He turns to look at her, dropping his hands, to fiddle with the gold ring around his finger.

“I, uh, wanted to ask you something,” he says, and Jyn frowns.

He’s nervous.

“What?” she asks.

“I was wondering, um… If you’d like to have dinner with me.”

“Uh…” Jyn begins, at a loss for words.

They have dinner together most nights, in their apartment, with Fima.

She says as much, and Cassian bites his lip, and wrings his hands together more forcefully.

“I mean, um, with me,” he says. “Just with me. Not at home. But, um. In a restaurant.”

At last, it clicks.

“You’re asking me out,” Jyn says, and she can’t stop the grin that crosses her face. “On a date.”

“Trying to, yes.”

They haven’t gone on many dates before; they were too caught up in the war, in the aftermath of the war, in all the work they had to do. Dates were always on base, usually with friends around, and always in between missions. Dates never felt intimate, and never left Jyn feeling like she’d gotten to know Cassian better.

But things are different now.

They’re getting to know each other again, after four years apart.

Maybe they can be people who go on _real_ dates.

“Okay,” she says.

“Yeah?” Cassian’s eyes are wide, and he almost looks surprised.

She wonders how long he’s spent fretting about asking her on a date.

She can’t help but find his nervousness endearing.

“Yeah,” Jyn says.

 

* * *

 

Jyn tells Amaia that she’s going on a date with Cassian, and Amaia tries very hard to express a casual amount of delight, and fails entirely.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a couple have a relationship as out of order as you two do, but whatever works,” she says, clasping her hands tightly together, in a move Jyn is sure is only done to prevent herself from clapping.

Amaia was always unabashedly enthusiastic about Fima, and so Jyn isn’t too surprised that she’s similarly excited about Fima’s parents trying to get themselves together. Amaia has always liked Cassian well enough, and before he came back, Jyn was never able to trick her into believing that Jyn was perfectly fine without him.

Amaia also lends Jyn a dress to wear, because Jyn doesn’t really have any dresses, and definitely doesn’t have any warm dresses that fit her.

Amaia is a few inches taller than Jyn, yet the dress she loans her, a light gray one that Jyn thinks might be the softest thing she’s ever touched, falls only to Jyn’s knees.

Jyn frowns, looking Amaia up and down, and Amaia shrugs.

“I’m young, and I have fun,” she says, by way of explanation, and Jyn snorts.

Amaia also, unsurprisingly, agrees to watch Fima.

“We will hang out at the orphanage,” she says, smiling at Fima in her arms, as he eagerly plays with her long dark hair. “So it will be a whole crowd of people keeping an eye on him.”

Fima is the youngest baby at the orphanage, by far, and all the children there dote on him. Jyn doesn’t doubt he’ll have someone at his side for the whole evening.

So she isn’t nervous about Fima being away from both her and Cassian.

But she is nervous about going on a date with Cassian.

And she thinks this is so _stupid,_ because she has, technically, dated Cassian before, because she used to be _married_ to Cassian, because they lived together for six years, and have lived together for the past eleven months or so. And she knows Cassian better than anyone else knows him, and he knows her better than she thinks she knows herself, and there is nothing he can do or say that would surprise her.

But then Cassian shows up with flowers, and that does surprise her.

Flowers don’t really grow on Fest; they can’t, what with the frigid climate, the ice-covered soil. Plants and trees are grown indoors, under artificial light, and so they all have a habit of looking a little sallow, a little starved, and the flowers Cassian gives her embody these characteristics.

But they’re flowers, flowers from Cassian, and they’re dark blue, like the flowers she wore in her hair on their wedding day, and she’s almost positive this is not a coincidence.

He kisses her cheek. “You look beautiful.”

“Thanks, Cass,” she says, and Cassian smiles at her.

He looks very nice, she thinks, in a dark suit, even as his hands tremble, even as he fidgets with the ring around his finger. But he smiles warmly at her, and brushes his hand over Fima’s soft brown hair, and presses a kiss to his son’s head in farewell, and this is all just entirely Cassian Andor as he has grown to become.

Amaia ushers them out the door.

“Make good choices,” she calls, holding Fima in her arms. “Be responsible!”

“You’re a little late on that one,” Jyn mutters, tugging her coat on, giving Fima one last adoring look.

Fima is frowning now, looking a little worried, and Jyn thinks he’s close to figuring out that both his parents are leaving, and so she seizes Cassian’s hand and tugs him down the hall, away from Amaia’s apartment, before either of them can change their minds.

 

* * *

 

They go downtown, to a nice, Festian restaurant Jyn has walked past before but never been in. It’s snowing when they walk from the train to the restaurant, but the snow is light, not coming down violently like it had been the night Fima was born, when they rushed from the apartment to the medical center down the block.

Cassian’s hand is warm in hers.

They’re seated at a table near the window, looking out over the dark, snow-covered street, and their server is a middle-aged Festian woman with dark hair tied back and cool hazel eyes, and she looks over Cassian and Jyn briefly, and grins.

“First date?”

“Um…” Cassian hesitates, looking at Jyn.

Technically speaking, it’s very far from a first date.

But in a lot of ways, that’s what it really is.

“Yeah,” Jyn says. “First date.”

They are wearing matching gold rings, but Jyn knows Fest doesn’t have marriage traditions involving rings, so she isn’t surprised the server doesn’t recognize the significance of the rings. And it’s not like they’re actually wedding rings anyway.

Once the server leaves, with their order for non-alcoholic drinks (they’re both going sober, Jyn for Fima, and Cassian because the medications Duval is having him try to alleviate the symptoms of melancholia might not mesh well with alcohol), Cassian leans closer to Jyn.

“First date?”

She shrugs. “It’s not… entirely inaccurate.”

“No, I suppose it isn’t. We never really went on any dates, did we?”

“Not really. Our dates were always just kind of inserted around the war, and so was our marriage, and then you left me.”

There’s a short silence, and Jyn closes her eyes.

“I didn’t mean that,” she says, regretting her quick words.

She thinks it’s her nervousness, causing her to run her mouth like that.

“It’s fine,” Cassian says, quietly. “You’re right. And you get to be upset about all of that.”

“But I’m really not,” Jyn says. “Not anymore. I’ve forgiven you for that, for leaving me, and the point of _this_ is… You know, we’re trying again, trying to figure out how to be together. So, you know: first date.”

“First date.”

Cassian considers this for a moment, and then he lifts his hand, holding it out over the table.

“Hi,” he says. “My name is Cassian Andor.”

Jyn stares. “What are you doing?”

“If this is a first date, I should introduce myself, right?”

And, well, he’s not wrong. Jyn hesitates for another moment, and then she takes his hand, shaking it, and she thinks of how they have never introduced themselves like this before; they were only pointed out by other people.

_This is Captain Cassian Andor, Rebel Intelligence._

“I’m Jyn Erso,” Jyn says, and Cassian grins.

“Hello, Jyn.”

“Hi, Cassian.”

“Tell me about yourself.”

_Tell me about Cassian._

“I founded, and run, an orphanage in Fulcra,” Jyn says. “I take in children displaced by the war, from Fest, and all around the Atrivis Sector. Before that, I ran an orphanage on Onderon. Before that, I was a soldier, in Special Forces, for the Alliance. Before that, I was a rebel, and my only cause was my own survival. Before that, I was a Partisan with Saw Gerrera. Before that, I was the daughter of Galen and Lyra Erso.”

Though none of this is new information to Cassian, he nods along anyway, and keeps eye contact.

“That’s all good to know,” he says, “But tell me about _you_ , Jyn.”

Duval had asked her to talk about Fima. And then about Cassian.

He hadn’t asked her to tell him about herself.

As it turns out, this is something else Jyn can do.

“I was an only child,” she says. “And I hated that. Um, I snore; my teammates in my Alliance squad used to tease me for it, said I would give our position away.”

Cassian laughs, and the noise makes Jyn smile, and she continues.

“My favorite food is Fambaa Delight, but I’ve only had it a couple times, because it’s rare and unusual, even in the Outer Rim,” she says. “I have a scar on my right leg from when I was shot on Ord Mantell, and I have scars on my back from a bombing in Fulcra, and I have a couple ribs on my left side that occasionally ache because they never properly healed from a street fight I got into when I was seventeen. My favorite color is blue. I love to swim, but I don’t get to do it very often. I can’t cook to save my life. I was born in a prison. My parents loved me, but they both left me. I’ve lost years trying to fix my father’s mistakes. I have never been happier than when I’m with my son, and his father.”

She finishes, just in time for the server to return to take their order. Cassian looks a little stunned, a little shaken, and she worries that she’s said too much, pushed too hard, been too honest.

They order, and he waits for the server to leave before he turns back to Jyn.

“You sound incredible, Jyn,” he says, and Jyn bites her lip.

“Tell me about yourself, Cassian.”

_Tell me about Jyn._

“I work in an orphanage in Fulcra,” he says. “And I occasionally do translation work for the mayor’s office, and for a handful of international companies housed in Fulcra. Before that, I was Head of Intelligence for the Outer Rim, for the New Republic, and a Senior Advisor to Minister of Defense Leia Organa. Before that, I was a soldier, in Intelligence, for the Alliance. Before that, I was a soldier in the Corellian Resistance, and the Coruscant Rebellion, and the Fest Rebellion. Before that, I was the son of Gabriel Andor and Serafima Cassiano, and the brother of Nerezza and Zeferino Andor.”

“That’s all good to know,” Jyn says, and she sees Cassian smile as she repeats his words, “But tell me about _you_ , Cassian.”

“I was the youngest child in my family,” Cassian says, “And my siblings looked out for me. I’m a light sleeper, and an insomniac. I have melancholia, and it’s possible those things are connected, but it’s also possible that the years of my adolescence I spent as an undercover spy might have warped the way I sleep.”

Cassian’s hand is resting on the table, and Jyn takes it.

“My favorite food is Festian stew, and the recipe I use to make it was taught to me by my brother,” he continues. “That same brother shot me when I was thirteen, and I still have the scar on my shoulder. I have more scars from being shot, and stabbed, and tortured, than I’d care to count. I can swim, but I’d prefer not to. When I was twenty-three, an Angel on Iego saved my life, because it believed I had more work left to do. My mother was a member of the Cassiano potter family, and I inherited their fortune, even though I am hopeless at making pottery. My father chose his cause over me, and I spent the first thirty-six years of my life believing no one could love me more than their cause. I’ve died, and come back again. My melancholia means I don’t experience happiness the way most people do, yet I believe I am very close to it when I’m with my son, and his mother.”

Cassian’s hand is tight around hers, but she can still feel him trembling.

He waited six months after she first kissed him before he told her most of that, while the rest of it was only revealed to her in the last few months.

“You sound extraordinary, Cassian,” Jyn says.

As far as first dates go, Jyn thinks, they’re off to a pretty good start.

 

* * *

 

**_1 ABY_ **

“... And you know, after that, it was easy.”

“I don’t believe you,” Shara scoffs, eyeing Kes over the top of the vase she’s painstakingly trying to shape.

“Careful, careful,” Jyn calls, as Shara’s hands skim up the side of the vase too quickly, nearly toppling the thing over. From the other side, she tries to build the gray clay back up, as Shara’s foot presses rhythmically against the pedal of the potter’s wheel, keeping the vase moving.

“Sorry, Jyn,” Shara says, resuming her focus on the vase.

Kes chuckles.

“Do we really need another vase?” He asks, from his perch on his and Shara’s bed, a bottle of Circuit Cider in his hand.

“Vases are easy,” Jyn says.

Kes pulls a face, glancing towards the windowsill of the room, where six awkwardly shaped vases rest, looking like a miniature model of a very strangely (and poorly) designed city, the snow of Hoth piled behind the window like low-hanging clouds.

“I didn’t say we were particularly good at making them,” Jyn clarifies. “Just that they’re _easy.”_

“Yeah, because you don’t seem to follow any kind of structure, or rules, or laws of physics--”

“They brighten up the room,” Shara insists.

And she isn’t wrong about that. Though the Sernpidal clay they use to actually make the vases is gray, Shara turned up with a small batch of paints a couple months back, and now every vase they create is subjected to at least four different colors and patterns before being deemed complete.

“You’d think Cassian, at least, would be good at pottery,” Jyn mutters, referencing Cassian’s Sernpidal mother, who’d made a career out of creating pottery.

“Especially if he’s a Cassiano,” Shara adds. “Ugh, I want to know _so badly._ Jyn, why hasn’t Cassian gotten himself to Sernpidal yet?”

Jyn shrugs. “Too busy, I think. Whenever we both have some time, we like to go to Lah’mu.”

“Sure, but that doesn’t satisfy _my_ curiosity--”

“I dunno, I’m kind of okay with Cass being bad at pottery, like the rest of us,” Kes says, unexpectedly. “It’s good to know there’s something he sucks at.”

Shara snorts. “Yeah, I think Cassian needs more self-doubt--”

“C’mon, babe, you know I didn’t mean it like that--”

“Cassian would probably prefer to be better at pottery than he is at most other things,” Jyn notes.

Shara and Kes consider this.

“Yeah, that’s probably true,” Kes agrees.

As if summoned, the door to the room opens, and Cassian steps through.

“Hey,” he calls, to a chorus of greeting from the other three, shaking the snow off his boots. He leans down to kiss Shara’s cheek, squeezes Kes’ shoulder, and sits down at the potter’s wheel next to Jyn, kissing her briefly before turning to survey the vase.

“What, um. What are we making?”

Kes laughs, while Shara scowls. “Don’t be mean.”

“I don’t know much about art, but I think I remember reading something about realism and absurdism,” Cassian says, looking thoughtful. “Is that what’s happening here? Are we making absurdist art?”

“I think we moved into absurdism a long time ago,” Jyn mutters, and Cassian laughs, though he doesn’t disagree.

Arguably, Jyn and Cassian moved into absurdism after they survived Scarif.

“Did you just get back?” Jyn asks.

“About an hour ago,” Cassian says, reaching down for his bag, and digging through it. “But I thought it best to go into debriefing before I met up with all of you.”

He pulls out a bottle of what Jyn recognizes as Festian spice liquor, and hands it to Kes.

“Oh, much better,” Kes says, grinning, abandoning his cider. “Thanks, man. Jyn, you want a glass?”

“Sure,” Jyn says, keeping her eyes on the burgeoning vase, listening as Kes shuffles around the room, getting glasses.

“How was Fest, Cassian?” Shara asks.

Jyn feels Cassian shrug next to her. “The same, more or less. Cold. The Atrivis Sector Force has had some success in the last few months. Except, um… The leader of Travia Chan’s forces on Fest died in a battle last month, and she offered me his job. On Fest.”

Jyn nearly upends the fragile vase in her haste to look at Cassian.

“Kriff, what did you say?”

His expression is calm, but Jyn can see something burning behind his eyes. Guilt, and regret.

She already knows what he said.

“I declined, politely,” Cassian says, somehow managing to sound diplomatic even while Jyn knows he would have loved to say yes, to move back to Fest permanently, to run the rebellion group he grew up in. “I… There is too much to do here, with the Alliance. I have… responsibilities. I can’t go back to Fest, not now. It isn’t…”

He trails off, but Jyn knows what he was going to say.

_It isn’t close enough to the Empire._

He thinks he wouldn’t be doing enough.

“Okay,” Jyn says, softly, and Cassian shrugs.

“You dodged a bullet, Jyn,” Kes comments. “Now you don’t have to move to Fest either.”

“That’s true,” Jyn says, smirking, and the mood lightens again.

Instinctive, defensive pride for his homeworld has Cassian interjecting, “Hey, Fest is a perfectly fine planet, and Kes, and Shara, if either of you ever wanted to see it--”

“It would be nice to see where you came from,” Kes says, passing a glass of liquor to Cassian.

“There isn’t much to see,” Cassian says, shrugging with the truth of it. “It’s very like Hoth, except… Gray.”

“Gray,” Kes repeats. “That already explains so much.”

Cassian rolls his eyes.

Shara looks at Jyn over the top of the vase.

“What do we think; is it done?”

“Why not?” Jyn replies, and Shara chuckles.

She lifts her foot off the pedal, letting the vase spin to a stop, and the four of them study it.

“Innovative,” Kes remarks.

“It’s… unique,” Jyn decides.

Cassian turns his head, squinting at the vase. “It’s shaped almost exactly like this one concert hall on Coruscant.”

“We meant to do that,” Shara says, getting to her feet.

“Are we keeping this one?” Cassian asks Jyn, as she accepts a wet towel from Kes.

 _“Yes,_ take it,” Kes insists.

Jyn shrugs, turning to look at Cassian. He looks tired, she thinks, though he tends to look like that whenever he has to leave Fest; exhausted, and a little dejected, and a lot sorry.

He lifts his hand, and brushes his thumb over the curve of her cheekbone. “You’ve got a bit of clay there.”

“Oh,” Jyn says, but Cassian gently rubs it off before she can.

“It’s gone,” he says, showing her the smudge of gray on his thumb.

Shara returns to her seat across from Jyn, and while Jyn, Cassian, and Kes all have glasses of Festian spice liquor, Shara is drinking a non-alcoholic tea from Sernpidal, recognizable by the dark red petals floating around the mug.

Jyn is pretty sure she’s seen Shara drink Festian spice liquor before, and so she frowns, but before she can ask, Shara speaks.

“So, um, we have some news,” she says, pausing for only moment, before speaking in a quick, joyous rush: “I’m pregnant.”

“No way,” Jyn says, automatically, as Cassian breaks into a wide grin.

“Way,” Shara says. “I’m not very far along, but yeah. We’re going to have a baby.”

“Shara,” Cassian breathes, and he leans forward to hug her, Shara returning the hug, a bigger smile on her face than Jyn thinks she’s ever seen from her before.

Kes looks similarly thrilled.

“No one else knows yet,” he says. “We wanted to tell you two first.”

“Well, congratulations,” Jyn says. Her surprise is beginning to melt away, to be replaced by delight.

She had known that Kes and Shara wanted kids; they’ve mentioned it, a handful of times. And Jyn has no doubts that they’re going to be the most amazing parents, that their child will be loved to pieces.

“Are you leaving the Alliance?” Cassian asks.

Kes and Shara exchange a look.

“No,” Shara says. “Well, not yet. I’ll have to take a leave of absence, before and after the birth, but… I want to come back. There’s too much to do here, and I don’t feel like I’ve done enough yet.”

And that’s something Jyn and Cassian understand.

Kes lifts his glass, and the others mirror him. “To the newest Dameron, whoever they turn out to be.”

“To making better vases,” Shara says, and Kes laughs.

“To Fest,” Jyn says, winking at Cassian.

He smiles at her, and there is a soft hint of hope in his eyes, that rare, glimmering bit she doesn’t get to see from him often.

It’s like spotting a shooting star; fleeting, and unforgettable.

 _I am so in love with you_.

“To the future,” Cassian says, and this is the most optimistic thing she’s ever heard him say.

The clink of the glasses echoes in the room.

 

* * *

 

**_11 ABY_ **

They talk.

They talk, all through dinner.

Jyn doesn’t think she’s ever had such a long conversation with Cassian before; or, at least, never had one quite like this.

They pretend to know as little about the other as possible, and they still somehow manage to learn new things. Jyn goes into great detail about a game she used to play with her toys around her mother’s crops on Lah’mu, with Cassian asking specific and thoughtful questions about her strategy. Cassian tells her about an epic snowball fight he participated in with his siblings, and his father, back when his father was still alive.

But they don’t linger in the past.

Cassian talks about his translating work, and teaches Jyn a handful of Mantooian phrases, smiling as she stumbles through the pronunciations, gently correcting her inflection. They draw a handful of stares for that, from the Festians eating in the restaurant around them, but Cassian has always drawn scowls and glares for being a Festian who can speak Mantooian, and so he ignores these tense looks. And Jyn has never cared what other people think of her.

And she isn’t Festian, not like Cassian is.

Jyn talks about the children in the orphanage, and she can tell Cassian details about them that he doesn’t know, as she spends more time with them. She tells him about Benita, twelve years old, the newest arrival at the orphanage, from a village on the other side of the planet; Benita, who has the most beautiful penmanship, despite losing her dominant hand to an Imperial bomb when she was four. She talks about Dimas, fifteen years old, set to come of age on Fest in two months, who’s already got an apprenticeship at a tailor’s shop lined up, who’s pledged to come back and volunteer at the orphanage after he moves out. She describes Joao, six years old, orphaned as an infant, just weeks after the Empire lost the Battle of Jakku and the war ended; Joao, with a crooked smile and missing teeth, who doesn’t remember his soldier parents at all.

Cassian listens as she speaks, and volunteers bits of his own history as a war orphan of Fest. Jyn listens in sympathy, as he recalls how kids from Old Republic-supporting families jeered at him at school for his Separatist-supporting father, and how Zeferino, despite mostly agreeing with those kids, went out of his way to stand up for their father, both for family pride and to dissuade a five-year-old Cassian from crying over the teasing.

“Your brother loved you,” Jyn says, softly, because even if this is supposed to be a first date, she can’t forget how difficult and complicated Cassian’s relationship with his brother was.

“I think he loved me once,” Cassian says, and this is the kindest thing she thinks he’s ever said about Zeferino.

And Jyn can talk about being a war orphan too, of joining the Partisans as a child, of learning arithmetic from a wizened Dressellian one day, and spending the next day learning how to inflict a killing blow with a pocketknife. She describes the various planets she lived on and visited, from arid Rajtiri, to temperate Corlus, to inhospitable and rocky Geonosis, and the survival lessons she took from them all.

“How are you liking Fest?” Cassian asks.

“It’s good,” Jyn says, and she truly means it. “I like it here. I like the people, and the sense of community. It… That was something I didn’t ever really have, growing up. Not on Lah’mu, it was too isolated; and not even really with the Partisans, because everyone was so guarded and distant with one another. We thought we had to be. The first time I really understood community was when I joined the Alliance, and I think… Growing up with that… I might’ve turned out differently.”

A little less standoffish, a little friendlier.

She’s become more genial over the years, has learned to be patient and careful, but it’s taken most of her adulthood to do so.

“I think you turned out wonderfully,” Cassian says, and Jyn blushes.

And they talk about Fima, of course, because they cannot possibly _not_ talk about Fima.

“His first word is going to be _Mama_ ,” Cassian states, and he sounds absolutely confident, more confident than he sounds concerning just about anything else.

“I think it’s going to be _Amaia_.”

“Oh, she would love that. I think we should be a little worried about not getting him back from her.”

Jyn laughs.

She thinks she’d forgotten, at some point, over their four years of separation, how Cassian used to make her laugh, with his dry, somewhat dark, and nearly always sarcastic sense of humor.

It’s similar to her own.

“What’s your favorite thing about Fima?” he asks.

“What, I have to pick _one_ thing?”

“I won’t tell him what you picked.”

“That isn’t the problem, the problem is… Kriff, I don’t know,” Jyn says, shaking her head. “I love everything about him.”

They’ve long finished their dinner, and Jyn is feebly picking at the remnants of their dessert, a rich and thick cake that had led to Cassian telling her about the first and only time Nerezza ever attempted to bake, a similar cake for Cassian’s seventh birthday, an event that had led to her nearly burning Serafima’s house down.

“Of course we love everything about him,” Cassian says, in response to Jyn’s bewilderment. “And of course the best thing about him is how he loves us unconditionally. For now.”

“Stop talking about my baby growing up,” Jyn grumbles, and Cassian smirks.

“I’m asking what it is about Fima that gives you the most joy.”

“That seems like something I should ask you,” Jyn says.

Because Cassian has a more difficult time grasping what true joy feels like.

“You know what my favorite thing about Fima is,” Cassian replies.

“What? I do?”

“Jyn,” Cassian says, with the patient tone of someone who’s waiting for another person to catch up to them. “My favorite thing about Fima is that he’s bright.”

Bright, like Jyn.

Bright, because of Jyn.

Because Cassian isn’t bright. Because Cassian is melancholic, because Cassian gets swallowed up by sorrow, torn apart by guilt, and has been told, over and over again, that he is gray, before anything else.

And Jyn would agree with that; she’d agree that Cassian is gray.

But he’s more than that, too. Or, at least, it doesn’t remove all traces of light from him.

Cassian is sitting in front of her, and his skin is slightly flushed, the way he looks after he’s laughed a lot, and his eyes are big and clear and gazing at her with the kind of warmth she’s spent her whole life looking for.

“My favorite thing about Fima,” she says, “is that he has his father’s eyes.”

When Cassian smiles at her, she thinks he can’t be any less bright than her.

“Let’s go home,” Jyn says.

 

* * *

 

“Are you, um, sure?” Cassian asks, breaking off into a string of swear words, and Jyn grins, and kisses him again, pressing him further into the wall of the elevator.

“Yes,” she breathes, a moment later, as Cassian’s hands settle at her waist.

“Fima… Do we have to call Amaia, or anything--”

“To be honest, I think Amaia would be more disappointed than anything else if we actually showed up to get Fima tonight.”

Cassian laughs, a light, airy sound, and it makes Jyn’s breath catch, and the passionate kiss that follows it steals her breath completely.

The elevator doors open, and they trip out of it, and Jyn clings to Cassian’s jacket, trying to get as close to him as possible, while Cassian’s hands scrabble across her back, one hand catching in her hair, the other under her coat, clutching at the soft gray fabric of her dress.

Jyn feels young, impossibly young, and wonderfully fearless.

They reach the door of their apartment, and Jyn doesn’t know how he does it, what with the way she’s fumbling at his shirt buttons, and the way his breathing has turned ragged, but Cassian manages to unlock the door and get it open, and they stumble in.

The door slams shut, and it’s quiet for a moment, save for their frantic breathing.

Cassian’s eyes are very wide, pupils all but blown out.

“I don’t do casual,” he says.

“Cass, in what fragging universe are we _casual_ \--”

She kisses him again, desperately, like she’s kissed him before, when she was desperate because she always had that persistent fear in the back of her mind that he was going to leave, that they were running out of time.

But she kisses him desperately, this time, simply because she wants him so badly, and this is a reason that is a million times better.

He kisses her back just as furiously, near violently, and then he puts his hands on her face and pulls back, leaning her against the wall she’s been shoved against, their coats fallen on the floor around their feet.

“I don’t put out on the first date,” he insists.

“Okay, I know that is _not_ true, you told me your first date with Taraja ended with her going back to your flat, and giving you--”

“Kriff, I forgot I told you about that,” he says, and he’s laughing, and his cheeks are a soft, rosy red, and his hands are so warm on her face, and she can’t take her eyes off him, his face, and the lines that have emerged on it, the minute changes she’s gotten to catalog, because it’s a face she’s spent so much time looking at over the last eleven years.

His nose is slightly crooked, from getting it broken by the fist of his best friend when he was nineteen, and there’s a thin scar on the underside of his jaw, a cut from a dagger that would’ve been lethal if he hadn’t dodged out of the way in the nick of time. His hair is still dark, but shorter than she’s used to seeing it, because he’s still growing it out from the mandatorily short haircut he had while he’d been a senior leader in the New Republic Military.

But the most defining part of his face, the part that has not changed at all in eleven years, are his eyes. Still brown, and sharp, and annihilating.

And he looks at her the same way as he always has.

Like she is something to be treasured, something to be watched, something to be remembered.

Something to be devoted to. Something to follow.

Something shining, and something bright.

Jyn swallows, and wraps a hand around his wrist, and presses a kiss to his palm.

“This isn’t a first date,” she says.

Cassian blinks at her, surprised for a moment, maybe a bit confused.

And then he smiles.

“Okay,” he murmurs.

Because Cassian doesn’t know intimacy without emotional connection, has never wanted to know, has only ever been in love with his first love, Taraja, and his second, Jyn.

And he’s asking her if she’s sure because he wants to know that she’s just as certain of him, that she wants him like he wants her, because he doesn’t know any other way to want anyone, much less Jyn.

And this has not always been Jyn’s experience with intimacy.

Until, of course, Cassian.

She isn’t going back.

“I am so in love with you,” Jyn blurts, and she feels her heart thrum in her chest, but not from fear.

Because, for perhaps the first time, she truly isn’t afraid to say the words, to tell him something so precious to her, to say a truth she has long struggled with expressing.

Her heart beats more quickly because it’s so relieved to say it.

Because she is no longer afraid of loving Cassian, someone she’s loved for eleven years.

Someone who left her. Someone who came back.

Someone who loved her the whole time. Someone who loves her _more_ , now. More than the cause, more than the war.

Someone who has finally _chosen_ her.

All she’s ever wanted is someone to _choose_ her, someone to pick her.

She takes the love she’s had for him for the past decade, and she turns it into faith.

It is not something she’s done a lot. Not something she’s done for anyone else.

Cassian stares at her, and she knows he can read all of this from her, because he’s always been able to understand her, better than anyone else ever has.

“I am so in love with you,” he tells her, and she believes him.

Absolutely. Entirely.

For once; fearlessly.

“Thank you,” he adds, and she nods, and fists her hands in his shirt, pulling him back to her.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, but I just. I can't write smut with Cassian. I've been writing about Cassian since he was a small child. Like, that's my son. NO.
> 
> So much sappiness, though, I mean...
> 
> [From me, at least.]
> 
> The backgrounds Cassian and Jyn tell each other all occurred at some point in the Nonsense.
> 
> If you read AMOR FATI, which this story is a timestamp/mini sequel for, you remember that the problem with Cassian and Jyn was never a lack of love. They were always in love. The problem was always choice. They put the war above the other for years (though, arguably, Jyn never did; save for maybe a moment in YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS) and ultimately, Cassian chose his love for the war and the cause over his love for Jyn, and he left. 
> 
> In AMOR FATI, he chooses to love Jyn more than anything else, more than the war, and the cause. So we, the audience, already know he's in, 100%. He's not going anywhere.
> 
> But Jyn isn't totally sure. She ends AMOR FATI by telling Cassian that she needs time to believe him when he says he loves her more than the war, and that he won't leave her again.
> 
> This chapter was her realizing that first part is true, that Cassian's love for her is genuine, though I'm not even sure she ever really doubted that. It definitely does not take her as long to accept this as it does the second part: the devotion part.
> 
> The next chapter, the final chapter of this story, sees her realizing that: that Cassian is not going anywhere, and that he is devoted to her now. He's going to pick her, like she has picked him.
> 
> [Just trying to make things clear for those who did not read AMOR FATI and might be unclear on the issues driving this story.]


	6. how rare and beautiful it is to even exist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I want you to consider that you don’t have to punish yourself for your melancholia. I want you to forgive yourself for it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Saturn" by Sleeping At Last, from ATLAS: YEAR ONE.

Cassian had believed that the number one thing Jyn needed to truly believe he was committed to her, that he was staying with her and Fima for good, was time.

Time to see him with them.

Time to see him _choose_ them.

And, as it turns out; he’s right.

They officially enter into a romantic relationship, much to the delight of everyone they tell, including Amaia (who did not even attempt to hide her smirk when they turned up at her place for Fima, the morning after the so-called first date) and Kes (who rolled his eyes and muttered something about being a good friend, and then said he and Poe wanted to come to Fest for Fima’s first birthday) and Leia (who managed to keep a straight face, something Jyn commented on to Cassian, someone who had spent a decade studying Leia’s expressions and knew she’d been fighting laughter during the whole conversation; Cassian kept this to himself).

Jyn starts to casually refer to Cassian as her boyfriend, and this makes polite conversation easier in one way, in that she finally has a good way to refer to Cassian beyond _ex-husband_ or the simple but clarity-lacking _Fima’s father_. But it makes polite conversation more difficult in another way, in that calling Cassian her boyfriend feels incorrect, or at least insufficient at describing exactly how important he is to her.

They both endure the polite ribbing from casual acquaintances about them not being married.

Jyn doesn’t really see the point of getting married. They had been married before, and it hadn’t prevented Cassian from leaving her, and so she doesn’t see it as any extra insurance, or further evidence, that Cassian is going to stay.

But it seems like most couples on Fest with children are married, and so she understands why shopkeepers and restaurant staff and neighbors all express confusion and bewilderment at the absence of her marriage, especially with her and Cassian living together, and raising their son together.

Cassian picks up on Jyn’s apathetic feelings towards marriage, but as is typical with him, worries about an unlikely disadvantage of them not being married, and brings it up: two months after the start of Cassian and Jyn’s relationship, some four months after Cassian’s thirty-seventh birthday.

“You know, when I die,” he starts, over breakfast, and Jyn nearly chokes on her toast.

“What do you know that I don’t know?” Jyn demands, wondering if Cassian has learned of a complication relating to his melancholia, or if a doctor has told him he’s guaranteed to contract Quannot’s Syndrome any day now.

(She remembers Akim Cassiano remarking that Cassian’s grandfather had not lived to reach his fortieth birthday, and so she holds this fear that Cassian will inherit this fate in the back of her mind.)

“No, nothing like that,” Cassian says, looking somewhat abashed at Jyn’s violent reaction, probably realizing he could’ve led with gentler words. “I mean, when I die-- _eventually_ , I have no plans to do so any time soon--I want you to have my Sernpidal inheritance.”

The Sernpidal inheritance, the term Cassian uses to refer to the veritable fortune he’d inherited from his mother’s wealthy and influential pottery-making family.

“Okay,” Jyn says. “I’d like that too.”

Cassian smiles a little at her slow words, and clarifies, “It’s just, ah. You would get it, automatically, if we were married.”

Jyn blinks.

On the other side of the table, Fima has discovered the simple joy of spinning his spoon in a circle.

“You think we should get married,” Jyn says, stunned.

“I think… It would be… Helpful. If I should die. Helpful, for you, and for Fima.”

They both look over at their ten-month-old son, who is busy staring hard at his spoon.

“Is the only way to make sure your family inherits your money through marriage?” Jyn asks, avoiding Cassian’s eyes.

“I’m not sure. I’d have to ask an attorney--”

“Great, do that,” Jyn says, and she gets to her feet.

And Cassian doesn’t argue with her.

He does get in touch with an attorney, who advises that if Cassian isn’t going to marry Jyn, that he create a will stipulating his wishes.

Cassian is bizarrely enthusiastic about drafting a will.

“It’s strange,” he says, looking almost thrilled, going over the notes and instructions given to him by the attorney, and Jyn can only stare. “I’ve never actively planned for my death before.”

(He’s only ever wanted Jyn to be with him for it.)

He feels like it’s something he has some control over, even in a distant way, by ensuring Jyn and Fima inherit everything from him.

And Jyn supposes she can understand that.

She suspects that marriage is more important to Cassian than he lets on, and she suspects that this is due to his memories of his parents separating when he was a child, and the sadness and confusion their estrangement created in him.

But he’s also aware that this is not the same situation he and Jyn are in.

They’re together, and in love, and this is something Fima can grow up knowing for sure.

Privately, Jyn still fears Cassian is going to leave them, one day.

She fears that he’ll be unable to bear his guilt over what he did in the war, that he’ll decide the only way to atone is by continuing to work and fight, and he’ll go back to the New Republic Military.

But she thinks that even if this does happen, her worst fear, that Fima will still grow up knowing his father, and that his father loves him and his mother.

Cassian might just be unable to live in peacetime, to live with his melancholia, when he’s not driving himself towards a war.

She hopes this is wrong.

She thinks they all have to wait, and see.

 

* * *

 

Jyn leased her apartment in Fulcra under the belief that she would only be on Fest for a few months, maybe a year, to get the orphanage up and running, and that she would then leave and return to her first founded orphanage on Onderon.

She had no idea about Fima when she picked the apartment, and the thought of Cassian coming back was, perhaps, even less likely to her than a surprise pregnancy.

As the months pass, it becomes increasingly clear that the apartment is not meant for two adults and a growing child.

She tells Cassian that she thinks they should get a house.

Jyn remembers the move from Coruscant to Lah’mu when she was a child, remembers her joy at leaving the cramped city for the open plateaus of Lah’mu, and she thinks Fima will also find some happiness in having more space. But Fest is a lot different from Lah’mu; it’s frequently impossible to play and spend long periods outdoors, and so there isn’t much of a point in having a _yard,_ if such a thing could exist on Fest. And the orphanage is located well within the major and sprawling city of Fulcra, and so they can’t leave the city, though Jyn wouldn’t want to; she loves Fulcra, as it is.

They start looking within the city.

Cassian is firmly against living on the outskirts of Fulcra. His mother’s house had been in the outskirts of the city, and Cassian had found living so far from the people and culture within Fulcra to be isolating; this had, of course, been Serafima’s goal in living on the city’s edge, as she’d believed her children would be safer, physically away from the violence of the war.

But there is no war in Fulcra, nor on Fest; not anymore.

And one of the reasons Jyn chose to stay on Fest was for the warmth and community, and she wants Fima to grow up with this.

After a month or so of casual searching, they settle on a house.

It’s in a safe neighborhood just outside the Arts District of Fulcra, a four bedroom house that is far bigger than any place both Jyn and Cassian have ever lived in, but it means they have a room for Fima, a room for them, and offices for both of them. Jyn is full-time in the orphanage and Cassian is too, mostly, though he keeps getting Mantooian translation work from international businesses across Fest, work he finds enjoyable and engaging.

The house is painted a dark gray, like most buildings on Fest, but the inside is spacious and light, and this is exactly what they wanted. The front room is of an open design, with a fireplace, and the windows in the kitchen are made of a thick, but somehow still ornate, kind of glass. The back of the house, and Fima’s room, faces the side of an art museum, a wall which is constantly being painted over by visiting artists, meaning it’s always covered in some kind of colorful pattern, and this is unusual and welcomed.

It’s the first house Jyn has ever had of her own, and she loves it.

Fima is eleven months old when they move in.

He says his first word in the house, in the front room, while Jyn is reading inventory reports for the orphanage and Cassian is deciphering a message in Mantooian regarding solar energy panels, and Fima’s first word is the one Cassian had predicted.

“Mama.”

“Yeah?” Jyn asks, automatically, not looking up from a list of recent deliveries, not gathering the significance of the word.

Cassian does look up, to stare at Fima.

“Fima,” he says, softly, but Fima is frowning at Jyn.

“Mama,” he repeats, insistently.

“Yes, Fima,” Jyn says, and looks at him.

A moment later, it clicks.

“Holy stars,” she gasps, and upends her work, diving to the floor to reach Fima. “What did you just say?”

“Mama,” Fima says, for the third time, and reaches for her.

_“Yes,_ yes, that’s me,” Jyn says, and she wraps Fima up in her arms, her eyes stinging with the kind of happy tears she’s never experienced before.

She feels Cassian’s hand on her back, and he drops to his knees next to her, a warm smile on his face.

“Told you so,” he says, and she grins.

 

* * *

 

For the first two years of Fima’s life, news about the New Republic is difficult to come by.

Fest is well out in the Outer Rim, close to the edge of Wild Space, and so the Atrivis Sector is relatively self-regulated, the planets within the sector working together on their own, more or less, not relying on the New Republic for much of anything. This is why Travia Chan called Jyn Erso for guidance on opening an orphanage for war orphans, rather than getting in contact with the New Republic Department of Social Services on Chandrila, and this is why Asori Joshi, two decades earlier, was so surprised by Cassian Andor’s knowledge and test scores deeming him eligible for the Royal Imperial Academy, as he hadn’t been educated in the Inner Rim.

Cassian still keeps in touch with Leia Organa, messaging her fairly regularly, but they talk mostly about their families, and their mutual friends. Cassian is no longer a member of the New Republic Military, nor the government, and so he doesn’t have the clearance to know the details of what Leia and the Department of Defense are up to.

He tells Jyn that he is more than okay with not knowing, but Jyn still isn’t convinced.

She is still happy, still content, still in love, but she keeps the fear in the back of her mind that Cassian is going to leave.

She knows she needs to be prepared should this come to pass, that she needs to be able to keep it together, because she has Fima now, and he’ll need her when Cassian goes.

No longer is Jyn waiting for Cassian to come back; she’s waiting for him to leave. Again.

And then shortly after Fima’s second birthday, and twelve years after the Death Star, and seven years after the Battle of Jakku sent the Empire into a spiraling free-fall decline, the first concrete evidence of an organized Imperial uprising is heard, and the news reaches far away Fest.

Imperial Remnant; that’s what the group is being called by the New Republic.

It’s late at night, Fima long put to bed, and Jyn and Cassian are sitting in the front room of their house, listening to the breaking news on the holonet.

Jyn listens, learning about the former Imperial general uniting thirteen warlord fleets from the Deep Core Worlds with Imperial factions in Mid and Outer Rim territories, once again taking up the Imperial crest as the group’s symbol, calling themselves the True Empire, pledging to continue the Empire’s war with the New Republic, picking up where the Empire’s agenda had left off.

Jyn hears the announcement that the Imperial Remnant has a government on Orinda, and then she has to flee the room.

She goes into the kitchen, and leans over the sink, bracing her arms on the counter, struggling with the nausea swelling up in her gut.

Soft footsteps behind her tell her that Cassian has followed her into the room.

He stays near the door, giving her some space, and Jyn breathes over the sink, eyes closed.

“You okay?” he asks.

“No, Cass,” Jyn says, shaking her head. “No, I am not okay.”

She opens her eyes, rubbing a hand over her face, and happens to glance at the conservator, where she sees Fima’s latest drawing, given to her yesterday, one she’d immediately taped to the conservator for all to see.

It doesn’t really look like anything; Fima had said it was a snowstorm, and Jyn supposes this is true, though Fima’s depiction of a snowstorm consists of smudges and dots of all sizes and colors, making it a most abstract snowstorm.

But it’s something her son made, and signed, going by the scribble in the bottom corner Fima has claimed as his approximation of his own name.

And this is so much, too much.

She starts to cry.

Cassian goes to her immediately, and wraps his arms around her as she sobs.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs.

“It has a _government_ ,” Jyn says.

This is what makes the Imperial Remnant different from the handful of Imperial factions that have cropped up around the galaxy since the fall of the Empire. They were always disjointed, disorganized, and chaotic; but this is a group that is organized, and uniting, and calling for support. Calling for arms.

This was not supposed to happen.

Cassian nods against her hair, and she feels him press a kiss to her head.

“I’m sorry,” he says, again, and Jyn feels the cold, cold as the ice and snow just outside the window, seep into her chest.

She tries very hard not to remember that the last time Cassian had chosen the war over her, and left her, had been in another kitchen, in their apartment on Corellia.

She gathers herself together, and stops crying.

_(She keeps her head up, her chin high, and she does not cry._

_She will, later, after he’s gone.)_

She had been waiting for this, and prepared for it.

She steps out of Cassian’s arms, turning to face him, the gray light from the outside window pouring in around them.

“You have to say goodbye to Fima, first,” she says, avoiding Cassian’s eyes. “I can try to explain to him why you left and where you’ve gone, but you can’t leave him without saying goodbye. And you have to call us at least once a week, and you have to tell me where you are, and you have to visit every few months or so, and you--”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Jyn looks up.

Cassian’s voice is hard, and his eyes are wide, and he looks strangely angry, considering Jyn thinks if anyone has a right to anger, it’s her.

“You’re leaving,” Jyn says, confusion seeping into her otherwise determined tone. “The war clearly isn’t over, not with this Imperial Remnant group. You’ve got to go.”

“I’ve… I’ve _got_ to go?”

“Don’t you?”

Cassian stares at her, and as she watches him, she sees the anger seep out of his face, turning to sadness.

“You really think I’m going to leave you,” he murmurs. “Still.”

“Are… Aren’t you?”

_“No.”_

Jyn blinks.

Cassian scrubs a hand over his face.

The gray light catches on the gold ring around his finger.

“Jyn,” he says, quietly, “I am not leaving you. I’m not going back to the war. I’m staying with you, and Fima. I’ve promised you this, and I mean it.”

“But…”

Distantly, Jyn knows she shouldn’t argue, that she should take Cassian’s words and be grateful for them, but at the moment she’s too shocked to process everything correctly.

She had never fully believed him when he’d promised to stay.

“But, but it’s…” She shakes her head. “It’s a call to arms, it’s… The New Republic has a threat, an _Imperial_ threat, and…”

“And. What?”

“This is what you do!” Jyn exclaims, and she sounds a little hysterical, her inability to believe manifesting itself through her tone. “You fight for the New Republic, you run missions for Intelligence, you lead battles in the Outer Rim against the Empire, and that’s what’s happening now!”

“You’re going to wake Fima.”

“What the hell, Cassian--”

“Jyn,” Cassian says, still quietly, but firmly. “That’s what I _used_ to do. But I don’t do any of that now. Not anymore. I chose you. I love you. More than the war, more than the cause. I’m not going anywhere. Not without you.”

It is the first time anyone has told Jyn that.

It is the first time anyone has said they aren’t going anywhere without her.

Everyone Jyn has loved has left her.

Her mother. Her father. Saw Gerrera. Cassian Andor.

Sometimes, they come back.

Saw, in his stronghold on Jedha. Galen, outside his research facility on Eadu.

Cassian, outside her apartment door on Fest.

But they _always_ leave again.

Saw, crushed into pieces. Galen, struck down by Alliance bombs.

_So of course Cassian is going to go, again, too._

Unless… Unless he isn’t.

“You’re staying,” Jyn says.

“Yes,” Cassian says. “I’ve been trying to convince you of this for almost two and a half years. I’ve meant it, every time. I’m staying. With you. Watch me.” He swallows, and adds, “I understand why you still don’t believe me. I still have hope that you will believe me, one day.”

He came back to her before he knew about Fima; he came back _for her._

“With me,” Jyn says. “Staying… With me. You’re… with me.”

“All the way.”

He finally holds the exact same definition of _all the way_ as Jyn. He doesn’t say it to mean that he’s with her through the war, through the battles and fights, through the terrible things she has to do. He says it to mean he’s with her through anything and everything. Through peacetime.

Through everything now, and everything after.

To the future.

They finally have one.

And Cassian is here, Cassian is right in front of her, standing in the gray Fest light, and she could swear that he looks as bright to her as she does to him.

Jyn moves forward, and wraps her arms around Cassian’s back.

He stands still for a moment, and then he returns her hug.

Over his shoulder, outside the window, gray snow is falling.

 

* * *

 

**_0 ABY_ **

“Sergeant Erso, can you read this?”

“I’m a little busy!” Jyn yells, dropping down to the hard gray floor, as bright red light from a blaster sails over her, where her head had been moments before.

“I think it’s in Festian,” Private Mai yells back, not bothering to turn around and perhaps see what Jyn is busy with. “And I’m pretty sure your Festian is better than mine, namely because I know basically zero words in Festian, and you live with Captain Andor and he’s obviously Festian, and so you should probably take a look so I don’t send us down a garbage chute, or something--”

“We don’t really have much choice!”

Mai finally looks around, and spots the black-armored Imperial troopers firing rapidly at Jyn, who’s sprawled on the floor, trying to fire from around the corner.

“Ah.”

“Open the _kriffing_ door,” Jyn grunts.

“Yes, Sergeant,” Mai agrees, turning back to the door, and firing her blaster at the control panel.

Jyn scrambles to her feet, and the two of them sprint through the open doorway, the strange black-armored troopers pursuing them.

“Where’d the others go?” Mai calls as they run.

“No idea, I’ve been with you,” Jyn snaps, and she tries to remind herself to be patient, because Mai is relatively new to the Alliance, and brand new to commando missions, and they both volunteered for this mission, and on top of that, Jyn is supposed to be mentoring her.

She seizes Mai’s wrist and pulls her down a side hall, spotting another door ahead. It is, mercifully, unlocked, and she opens it, throwing Mai and herself inside.

She slams the door shut, locks it, and turns around.

The room looks to be an office space, with chairs gathered around a bank of screens, cabinets and files lining the walls. Mai immediately moves to a keypad under a screen, fumbling with the buttons, trying to get something to turn on.

“Come on, come on--”

Jyn tries a different tactic, tugging her comlink out of her pocket.

“Anyone out there?”

She pauses, and listens.

_“Jyn?”_

“Cass,” Jyn gasps, a smile crossing her face. “Thank goodness. Where the hell are you?”

_“Um…”_

She listens, heart in her throat, as blaster shots crackle over the connection. In front of Jyn, Mai has paused in her frantic movements, and is watching her.

_“Okay,”_ Cassian says, and Jyn breathes again. _“I’m in the southern wing, moving southwest. Where are you?”_

“Give me a minute,” Jyn replies, darting to the screens, which Mai has managed to turn on. She begins to flip through the Weapons Research Facility’s database, searching for a layout of the building.

_“Who do you have?”_

“Just Private Mai.”

“Hi, Captain Andor,” Mai calls. “Fest is, um, really something.”

_“I don’t count the Imperial Weapons Research Facility as part of Fest, Private, and I recommend you do the same.”_

“We’re in the… We’re in the southern wing,” Jyn says, voice rising with excitement, as she locates the office they’re in on the map of the building on the screen before her. “But don’t come find us, we had a squad on our backs--”

_“Uh, yeah, I found them.”_

More blaster shots echo over the comlink. Jyn sighs.

“Oh, for the love of--”

Jyn grabs her discarded blaster and unlocks the door, stepping out into the hallway.

The squad of dark-armored troopers is out there, but their backs are turned to her, firing at someone further down the hallway, and so they’re quite unprepared for Jyn and Mai to fire at them from the opposite direction.

She sees the figure further down the hall drop to the floor to avoid their fire.

Once all the Imperials are dead, the figure gets to his feet, and it’s Cassian.

Cassian, in a heavy gray coat matching the ones Jyn and Mai are wearing, though one of his sleeves has been torn, and there’s ash on his knees.

“We have to get out of here,” Cassian says without preamble, stepping over the dead Imperials like they’re trash, marching to Jyn and Mai. His cheeks are rosy, and there’s sweat beading at his temples, but he’s unharmed, and this is all Jyn really wants to see from him.

“What about the others?” Jyn asks.

“Everyone’s outside,” Cassian says. “They’ve gotten into three AT-PT Walkers, but they’re pinned down. I’ve called in air support, so we have to get out of this building.”

“Yes, sir,” Mai agrees, brown eyes wide, because air support means bombs.

Jyn immediately turns around, going back into the office, Mai and Cassian shadowing her. She pulls up the map of the Weapons Research Facility, scanning it for the nearest exit.

“There,” she says, pointing. “Left, left, right, left, and straight out.”

“Let’s move,” Cassian says, and they do.

They encounter another squad of dark-armored troopers on their way out, and Jyn makes a mental note to ask Cassian about these troopers, if he knows why they’re dressed like that, because it makes them stick out in the gray snow of Fest, and she thinks this is disadvantageous.

They reach the exit door, and blast it open without hesitation.

There are a handful of their fellow gray-coated Rebel commandos outside, trying to avoid fire from the XR-85 tank droids slowly approaching the Weapons Research Facility, a few AT-AT Walkers behind them in the distance.

The snow is falling hard, the wind is roaring, and the sky is black.

The three AT-PT Walkers commandeered by the rebels are advancing, trying to punch holes through the Imperial onslaught for the rebels on foot to flee through. They do have a couple ships ready for them, a Y-4 _Raptor-_ class transport and a smaller U-wing, but they’re both on the other side of this ice plateau ahead of them.

Over the howling wind, she hears Cassian yell a confirmation into his comlink, and the radio at her hip trills a handful of beeps, a signal loosely translated as _Drop what you’re doing and get back to the ship._

“Come on,” Cassian shouts in her ear, and Jyn follows him across the ice.

The AT-PT Walkers pick up the pace, moving more rapidly towards the approaching Imperial droids and Walkers, while the commandos in front of Jyn sprint towards the hills that line the Weapons Research Facility, hills they can duck down around to avoid fire from the Imperials, both the heavy machinery in front of them, and the soldiers spilling out of the Weapons Research Facility behind them.

TIE/sa bombers screech out of the Weapons Research Facility, in a last ditch effort to prevent the theft of the AT-PT Walkers, and the commandos scatter for cover.

Cassian reaches a pillar of ice, a twenty foot tall spiral pointing straight to the sky, and crouches on the snow-covered ground behind it. Jyn dives to his side, and spots Mai crouching under an ice alcove with the other commandos some twenty feet away.

“There they are,” Cassian calls, and Jyn looks up, peering through the thick snow, blinking against the howling wind, to see twelve T-47 airspeeders shoot through the sky, dropping thick bolts of light onto the Imperial droids and Walkers, and the Imperial soldiers scattered around the building.

“Go, go, go,” Cassian snaps, waving his arm, and Mai and the rest of their team get to their feet and begin to sprint up the hillside, towards the waiting ships.

Cassian and Jyn follow, as the airspeeders begin to loop back around.

Sapan, one of Jyn’s fellow Pathfinders, waits for Cassian and Jyn at the top of the hill.

“Captain Andor,” she yells, trying to make her voice heard over the fierce wind.

“Is everyone accounted for?”

“Yes sir.”

“Good, go,” Cassian says, and both Sapan and Jyn stare at him.

“Sir?” Sapan asks, uncertain.

Over Cassian’s comlink, she hears a voice: _“Shield generator down. Prepare for second run.”_

“I’ll take the U-wing,” Cassian says. “I’m going to stay behind for a bit, to make sure we get the AT-PTs out okay.”

Sapan hesitates, and Cassian speaks again.

“Tell Lieutenant Mazari to pilot,” he says. “Sergeant Erso can co-pilot.”

“With all due respect, Captain,” Jyn shouts, “I think I’ll stay here.”

And by that, she means, _I’m not leaving you._

Cassian glances at her, recognizes the resolution in her face, and nods.

“Private Sapan, you’ll co-pilot,” he says, turning back to Sapan.

“Yes, sir,” Sapan says, and turns, running down the other side of the hill, across the ice, towards the already rumbling Y-4 transport.

Jyn turns back to Cassian.

“What are we doing?”

And Cassian grins.

“Watching,” he says, and walks back to the hill’s edge.

Jyn follows, confused.

She reaches Cassian’s side in time to see the Rebel T-47 airspeeders begin to drop bombs directly on the Weapons Research Facility, lighting up the gray with bursts of red and blue light.

They take out the missile turrets, and the command tower. They raze the individual wings of the building, and demolish the main hangar. They crack and break the ice surrounding the base of the building, sending chunks of gray steel and concrete plummeting to the ground, creating pockets of orange fire where no fire should exist.

The destruction is absolute, and brilliant.

Jyn is startled when Cassian drops to his knees, there on the hill.

“Cassian,” she exclaims, dropping down next to him, grabbing his arms. “Cass, what’s wrong?”

His eyes are wide, locked on the burning Weapons Research Facility, the flames of the fires reflected in his eyes.

Jyn realizes the wind has died down, and the snow that falls around them now is thin.

“I’ve waited so long for this,” Cassian murmurs, eyes locked on the smoldering building before them.

(Fifteen years earlier, Nerezza Andor looked at her team of Festian rebels, and commanded them: “Light it up.”)

(Fifteen years earlier, twelve-year-old Cassian Andor met a black-armored trooper who was more machine than man, and fully realized the brutality and inhumanity of the Empire, and glimpsed a future where he, too, became more machine than man.)

(Fifteen years earlier, the Fest Rebellion critically damaged the Weapons Research Facility, but did not destroy it.)

(Fifteen years earlier, Cassian Andor sobbed in his sister’s arms, and wondered why he could still feel so defeated by a win.)

In the present, Jyn wraps an arm around Cassian’s waist.

She thinks about how Cassian is responsible for this mission. He first heard about it from Travia Chan, and the Atrivis Sector Force, and listened to her concerns that they’d need support from the Alliance to attempt something so audacious and ambitious, a direct hit on an iconic piece of the Empire on Fest, and so Cassian made sure the Alliance got on board. He pushed for it personally, and campaigned hard for it, talking Mothma herself into signing off on it. And then he designed the attack, and ultimately led it, even though leading a volunteer-based Special Forces team through an Imperial stronghold is not something he does in Intelligence.

The destruction of the symbolic and iconic Weapons Research Facility on Fest; it was something he, himself, had to accomplish.

To witness.

“It’s gone,” Jyn whispers.

The snow is cold under her knees, but she feels warm, and she looks up at the black sky.

A T-47 airspeeder flies over their heads, and she recognizes the symbol on its belly.

“It’s Rogue Squadron,” she exclaims, and Cassian’s head jerks up, seeing the symbol for himself, as more T-47 airspeeders fly over them.

Rogue Squadron, coming to their rescue.

(In another universe, Rogue Squadron demolishes the Weapons Research Facility on Fest, and Cassian Andor, a member of the squad’s namesake, does not live to see it.)

Cassian smiles at the airspeeders.

Jyn watches him.

He seems to be glowing, and she realizes this is Cassian when he is completely and utterly relieved.

When he lets himself feel an accomplishment as a victory.

He’s beautiful, under the black sky, surrounded by so much gray.

_This is where Cassian lives,_ she thinks.

Under the dark. Surrounded by gray.

Still: glowing.

She touches his face, and he looks at her.

“You’ve won this battle,” she says, “For Fest. For your home. For your family.”

An answer. A defense. A revenge.

There are three dead Andors on Fest, buried some two thousand miles from this spot, under the ice and the snow, killed directly or indirectly by the Empire.

The last living Andor sits here, now, and watches an Imperial symbol, an icon, burn to the ground.

Jyn Erso kneels at his side.

_(The white sand stretches in front of them, stopping at a seemingly endless blue ocean._

_In the distance, a wall of light is speeding towards them.)_

The Weapons Research Facility burns, sending thick plumes of gray smoke into the sky.

Cassian reaches forward, and takes Jyn’s hand in his.

_(“Your father would have been proud of you, Jyn,” he says._

_She breathes, her eyes swimming with tears._

_She reaches out, and takes his hand, squeezing it.)_

_“We_ did it, Jyn,” Cassian whispers.

He told her about the mission, said it was going to be volunteer-only, and Jyn didn’t waste one second before signing up. She talked everyone she could into coming along, removed herself from a mission with her regular Pathfinders team that was set to happen at the same time, and she knows Cassian is grateful for her efforts, for supporting him on this.

Jyn nods, and moves closer, pressing her forehead to his.

( _“Come here,” he says, and he forces himself up onto his knees, and he pulls Jyn Erso into his arms._

_She’s scared, and she’s trembling, and he’s shaking too, and they’re going to die here._

_“It’s okay,” he whispers into her shoulder. “I’m right here. I’ve got you. I’m not leaving you.”)_

“Thank you,” Cassian whispers.

Rogue Squadron flies across a black sky.

The Weapons Research Facility on Fest is destroyed.

Surrounded by gray snow and sharp ice, Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor breathe in sync.

 

* * *

 

Cassian stays.

Impossibly; Cassian stays.

More stories and rumors about the Imperial Remnant make their way to Fest, and while Cassian listens to the news, he doesn’t respond to it. He doesn’t do anything about it. He doesn’t ask Leia Organa for more information, and he doesn’t spend his days agonizing over his choice to stay out of the war, and on Fest.

Instead, he spends his days with Jyn, and Fima.

Jyn watches, as Cassian grows into his role as mentor to the children in the orphanage, and he teaches them how to cook, and how to iceboard, and how to climb around the cliffs and hills that line Fulcra. He makes them laugh, and he comforts them, relating to them on the deaths of their parents, relating to them on their traumatic stories of bombs and blasters, of ice and snow stained red.

He takes his medications, and he goes to therapy. He speaks honestly, and thoughtfully. He still doesn’t sleep well; he wakes in the night, and he weeps, and he trembles uncontrollably. He occasionally spends days in silence, occasionally gets irritated for no apparent reason. And he’s still sad, but he works hard on it, remembers that he has Jyn and Fima, and they love him.

He gets better.

He laughs a little more, and smiles a little more. He spends hours chatting with Fima, patiently listening to Fima’s imagined stories, and his summaries of his day. He picks up more and more work as a Mantooian translator on Fest, cultivating a reputation as the war veteran who, inexplicably, speaks Mantooian and understands Mantooian culture.

He and Jyn take Fima to the outskirts of Fulcra, and the ice plateaus that surround the city, and they show him the graves of Gabriel, Serafima, and Nerezza Andor, and Fima brushes his fingers over the gray stone markers, and Cassian crouches on the snow next to him and tells him stories about their dead family, and Jyn stands and watches.

He gets better.

He loves them.

He goes on dates, with Jyn.

They’ve been in love for twelve years, but for the first time, being in love with the other feels like a conscious choice.

They’re actively choosing it, and choosing the other.

And this is why, when Cassian looks at Jyn one day, and calmly says to her, “Marry me,” Jyn says yes.

He’s in love with her, and she’s in love with him, and this is finally enough.

There is nothing they are more committed to than the other, save for Fima, and they wouldn’t have it any other way.

They get married in Fulcra City Hall, Amaia and Travia Chan as their witnesses, Fima in Amaia’s arms and only vaguely understanding the significance of the event (because Fima doesn’t have any memories of his parents _not_ being together, so he’s unclear on why any of this really matters) and their vows are similar to the ones they said at their first wedding, on the beach on Akiva, fresh from a battle between the Alliance and the Empire, eight years earlier.

But this time, instead of _I will_ , they say _I do._

And when Cassian says he’s staying with her for the rest of his life, Jyn believes him.

And not because she believes he’s going to be killed in a war.

But because he loves her more than the war, and he isn’t going to leave her for it, or for anything.

She has waited her whole life to believe this.

She finally does, and it’s just as incredible as she had imagined it would be.

 

* * *

 

Fima is four years old when he announces that he wants a sibling.

It’s later in the day, close to Fima’s bedtime, and it’s just him and Jyn in the house.

Travia Chan has recently been sworn in as Prime Minister of Fest, and she’d wasted little time before asking Cassian to serve as her Ambassador to Mantooine, a move welcomed by everyone in her administration, as it seemed the logical next step for a Festian who had cultivated a reputation of understanding Mantooine. Cassian had fretted over the offer for a few days, and had asked Jyn what she thought. She’d told him to take the job.

It’d been clear to her that it was something Cassian actively _wanted_ to do.

And he’d come to talk to her about it before accepting the position, and this told her that Cassian really sees her as a partner, that he doesn’t want to do anything drastic or life-changing without her support, that he doesn’t want to accept a job that will take him from her a few times a month, to Mantooine, unless she’s okay with it.

And she is.

He will always come back.

And Mantooine isn’t that far.

Cassian has accepted the position only a week ago, and he’s still dealing with dozens of meetings, understanding what the job entails, meeting various government officials, planning his first trip to Mantooine on behalf of Fest, and so Jyn and Fima have seen little of him lately.

Perhaps this means Jyn shouldn’t be too surprised when Fima looks up at her, and says, quite calmly, “You should have another baby.”

Jyn stills, and carefully sets down her mug of Festian spice tea.

“What?”

“You should have another baby,” Fima repeats, blinking up at her. He’s sitting in front of the fireplace, surrounded by a couple toy x-wings, and Jyn had been quite content listening to his enthusiastic _whooshes_ and _bangs_ of whatever battle he’s imagining.

It’s not like Fima has ever seen a battlefield.

“Why?” Jyn asks, and she’s proud of how smooth her voice is, how she masks her surprise. “Why do you… Why?”

“I want a sibling.”

“... Why?”

Fima rolls his eyes, and he looks so much like Jyn with that movement it’s uncanny.

“Most of my friends have siblings,” Fima says. “And they love them, and they play together. I want one.”

They stare at each other.

Fima blinks innocently, clearly unaware that his request might be startling, and overwhelming, to his mother.

“Um…” Jyn hesitates, trying to figure out the best thing to say. “We’ll, uh. Think about it.”

Fima nods, looking satisfied with this response, and returns to his x-wings.

Jyn can’t stop staring at him.

Cassian finds her in the kitchen, working on another cup of tea, three hours later when he gets home from work.

“Hey,” he says, going to her side, brushing snowflakes out of his hair, and leaning down to kiss her. “What are you still doing up?”

Jyn doesn’t frequently stay up late. She works in an orphanage, and she always gets there before the kids wake up.

“Just thinking,” she says, going for nonchalant and mostly succeeding. “How are you? Are you hungry?”

“No, I’m fine, thanks,” Cassian says, and upon catching Jyn’s frown, gathering her worry that his melancholia is telling his brain he isn’t hungry and doesn’t have to eat, adds, “I had dinner with Travia, in her office.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“How are _you?_ You look a little strange.”

Jyn sighs. Cassian has always been able to read her too clearly.

“Fima… said something to me today,” she says.

Cassian stills, a half-drunk glass of water in his hand. “Okay?”

Jyn politely waits for Cassian to finish drinking.

“He wants a sibling. He thinks we should have another baby.”

Slowly, Cassian sets his glass on the counter. His eyes are wide, but the rest of his expression is calm, almost impassive; Jyn might have just told him Fima has decided he likes snow.

“What… What did you say to him?”

“I said we’d think about it.”

“We.”

“You and me, Cass.”

“No, yeah, I got that,” Cassian says, running a hand through his hair.

“I didn’t want to bring this up tonight,” Jyn says. “It’s late, and I’m tired, and I’m sure you are, too. And three of the kids at the orphanage are graduating from school next week, so I’m swamped with planning their party, and I know you’re just settling into your new job, and you’re stressed about that. So. And it’s not like we have to decide anything anytime soon.”

Cassian nods, his shoulders relaxing somewhat. “Right.”

“I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“No, it’s, uh…” Cassian hesitates. “Good to know. It’s better you mention this to me than Fima springing it on me unexpectedly.”

“Ugh, I know,” Jyn mutters, thinking about earlier. “But I guess, um… Think about it? And I will, too. And then we can talk about it in a week or two. Yeah?”

“Sure.”

Jyn gets to her feet, setting her mug down in the sink. “Okay.”

 

* * *

 

Jyn thinks about it.

She thinks about it a lot.

She understands Fima’s desire for a sibling, because she grew up feeling the same. She remembers repeatedly begging her parents for a younger sibling, especially during the years they spent on Lah’mu, when Jyn had only a few friends she rarely saw. She longed for someone to play with regularly, someone to talk to late at night when she couldn’t sleep, someone to frolic down to the sea alongside.

But her parents always denied her, insisting that she was enough, and Jyn, who has always wanted to be enough, accepted this reasoning.

But she thinks about how her life might have been different if she had a younger brother or sister, or an older one; how she wouldn’t have fled her home alone, how she would’ve always had someone watching her back, how she always would have had a shoulder to lean on during the long, difficult days.

She would’ve had _someone,_ when she had no one.

And while Jyn doesn’t plan to die anytime soon, and Cassian doesn’t either, she knows they will one day, and Fima will be left without a family. Both she and Cassian are the last members of their families. There will be no one with Fima after they’re gone.

Sure, there will be chosen family for Fima, the people he meets throughout his life and claims for his own, like Jyn and Cassian have done with Kes and Poe Dameron, and Travia Chan, Amaia Chias, Asori Joshi, and Leia Organa.

But they both had so many difficult years in between families, and never really felt at home with family until they found each other.

Jyn thinks about it.

It’s a little strange, but even with Cassian firmly staying, with Cassian married to her again, she hadn’t realized they could have another baby.

Fima had been unexpected, unplanned for, a fact told to Jyn by a doctor, a truth she’d spent weeks trying to accept, muttering to herself _You’re pregnant_ until the words blurred together and became meaningless. She had begun to believe she’d be alone forever, without any family, recently divorced from the husband who had promised to stay, and the news that she was going to have a child threw everything out the window.

But it was good news. Her son was good news. Someone to devote herself to, someone to follow; another cause to believe in.

And she thinks she and Fima could’ve been happy, just the two of them.

But she never would have entertained the thought of having another child.

She considers it now.

She thinks about having a family bigger than the one she grew up in, even if it’s by just one more.

And she knows she wants this.

 

* * *

 

Cassian is unsurprised by her decision.

It’s the weekend, two months after Fima had first floated the idea to Jyn, and Fima is at a friend’s house, and so it’s just Jyn and Cassian, sitting in the kitchen, and they wait until they’ve both finished lunch, and then Jyn says she wants another baby.

And Cassian only nods.

“I figured you’d decide this,” he says.

This isn’t exactly the kind of response Jyn was hoping to hear.

“What do _you_ want?”

Cassian is quiet for a moment, looking at his half-eaten plate, and then he sighs.

“I would love another child,” he says, and before Jyn can say anything else, he adds, “But I think we’ve been… _very_ lucky, with Fima.”

“Sure,” Jyn says, slowly. “He’s a good kid.”

“He’s also not like me.”

“He’s like you,” Jyn says, frowning now. “He’s considerate, he overthinks things, he walks through snow like it’s nothing. He’s lanky, and he’s got your eyes--”

“I mean, he doesn’t have the melancholia.”

A short silence falls, broken only by the soft pattering of the snow hitting the window.

Jyn studies Cassian.

“You’re worried that our second child might get the melancholia.”

“They’ve got a good shot,” Cassian says. “I’m from a direct line. Me, my mother, my grandfather. If Fima doesn’t have it--and it really doesn’t look like he does--then it could very well occur in our next child.”

“But, I mean, you might’ve gotten it, but Nerezza and Zeferino didn’t. That seems like pretty good odds--”

Cassian actually laughs at that. “You and I don’t have a very good track record of being _lucky,_ Jyn.”

And he isn’t exactly wrong about that.

“Melancholia is a lot like depression, right?” Jyn asks, and when Cassian nods, she continues. “And depression can be random. People who don’t have depression have children who do, right? So it’s not like it’s always a preventable thing.”

“But melancholia is _genetic--”_

“And catalyzed by something,” Jyn reminds him. “And yours was prompted by the war, or your father dying. So even if our child inherits the gene… It might never be catalyzed. They could grow up without it.”

“I just…” Cassian sighs. “I don’t want anyone to have to live with this. It’s very difficult. And to do that to a child, I…”

He looks away, his hand on the table tightening into a fist.

“We could adopt,” he says.

“No, we couldn’t,” Jyn replies. “No way in hell am I _picking_ one of the kids at the orphanage.”

Because she couldn’t pick any of them over any of the others; she adores and cares for them all, in different, individual ways.

Cassian nods, lips twisting, and he still won’t look directly at her.

“There are a lot of reasons why I shouldn’t be alive,” he says, quietly. “Melancholia is one of them, and something I’m still trying to figure out. Because to live, as long as I have, with the melancholia? It’s difficult.”

“Yeah, Cass,” Jyn murmurs. “I know. You’re extraordinary.”

Cassian looks at her, frowning. “I didn’t mean it like that--”

“No. But I do.”

He hesitates.

Jyn continues.

“You’ve never seen yourself correctly, Cassian.”

“I’m told that’s a symptom of melancholia,” he mutters, but Jyn is undeterred.

“I’ve always thought you extraordinary,” she says. “You’re righteous, and you’re selfless. Your work in the war was horrible, but it was always done so someone else could do something good, create something good, make sure something good happened. You’ve sacrificed yourself a thousand times for others. You believe you’re something cold and cruel, you _hate_ yourself, sometimes, but you _keep going._ You think I’m resilient, Cassian? What about _you?”_

He stares at her, and doesn’t interrupt.

“And you love me,” she says. “And you love Fima. You love us so much, you show this to both of us daily, and we’re so grateful. Your melancholia doesn’t diminish you. It doesn’t mean you love us any less. It doesn’t mean we love you any less.”

“Jyn--”

“You’re gray,” she says. “The melancholia makes you gray, and so does your morality. But I need you to consider something, okay? I need you to consider that gray isn’t always dark. I need you to believe that gray can be light. That gray can be _bright._ And then, maybe, you’ll see what I see when I look at you.”

 

* * *

 

Cassian has long told Jyn she’s bright, that looking at her is like looking at a star.

And all the while, he’s maintained his belief that he is only gray; unremarkable, suffocating, depressing.

But not all gray things are dark, and not all gray things are dismal, and not all gray things are dead.

Fest, for one.

Fest is gray, and it’s the most _alive_ planet Jyn has ever seen. It was so warm, and so welcoming, that she made her home in the ice, and the snow, at a time she believed she could never feel _home_ again. It was so hospitable, and lively, she decided to raise her son here. It’s a place that loves its people, that hides them among frost and cold, that never wants anyone to leave it.

Occasionally, an outsider comes to Fest, and Fest reaches out.

It took Jyn Erso in, because she saw the warmth, and she craved it.

It allowed Serafima Cassiano to live in it, because she saw the gray, and she found comfort in it.

And Fest knew she needed this.

Sometimes you live in the gray for so long, you forget gray is not all there is.

Cassian Andor’s love for Fest has long been tied to his lifelong sadness, because when you, yourself, are gray, you’re desperate for more of it, to convince yourself that this is how things are, this is all you need. This is how you learn to live with the gray within you; you make sure you see it everywhere. You find ways to survive, and thrive, even with the cold. You let it hug you, and you sink into it, and once you’re there; it is possible to make something out of it. And you must make something out of it.

Because the gray can be inescapable. Because the gray is misery. It keeps happiness at a distance, it ties a noose around your neck, it drains you of energy, it leaves you sitting in the dark. It is a cold, cruel thing. It is not beautiful. It is not romantic. It makes you forget the important things. It tries to tell you that it is impossible to keep going.

But if the gray is inescapable, if the sadness is chronic; you must learn gray does not mean dark.

Not automatically.

There is still light in gray. There is light on Fest, in the snow, and the ice, and the people.

If Jyn is a bright thing, then Jyn is a star; and if Cassian is a gray thing, then Cassian is the moon.

Something enduring, something unyielding, something cold, something gray.

Something resilient.

Something that survives, where no thing should survive.

(There is a reason Cassian Andor and Jyn Erso met because of a thing called the _Death Star,_ an annihilating creation named after a star, modeled after a moon, and nothing like either.)

The point is; even gray moons can be bright.

And so can someone like Cassian Andor.

It just takes a lifetime to understand this.

(And then a lifetime after that should not exist.)

The first step to understanding this is through a leap of faith.

A leap of faith, through choosing yourself, your betterment, and lowering the rifle, and not shooting the Imperial scientist on Eadu.

A leap of faith, through believing your wife, someone who has stayed with you through it all, who trusts you despite it all, who has faith in you, when no one should.

Except, maybe, someone should.

Maybe you should, too.

If only one person is going to have faith in you; make sure it’s you.

This is a kind of forgiveness. This is a way to forgive yourself. It’s also a way to try and love yourself, as best as you can, because you love bright things, and for a moment, you remember:

You, yourself, are not gray. Not _only_ gray.

It just might be the only thing you can see when you see yourself.

But try to trust yourself to shed a little light.

Remember that it’s there. Even when you can’t remember the light anymore; trust that it used to be there.

It is not your mother’s fault that you never lived with it.

It is not your fault that you can’t picture it.

You can still glow without the light.

Forgiveness still exists there.

 

* * *

 

Cassian thinks about it.

He thinks about it a lot.

He thinks about it for months, for over a year.

“I’m not bright,” he says to Jyn, one day during breakfast.

“Not like me, no,” Jyn agrees, pouring herself a glass of milk. “But no one is, remember? You’ve said that.”

“Fima is.”

“Then maybe our second child will be like Fima and me,” she replies. “But if they aren’t, that’s okay. We would be delighted to have someone else gray like you. Fima and I love you, and you’re not bright like we are.”

“You think I _am_ bright, just… differently.”

“You glow.”

He can’t picture it, but if the bright/gray thing is a metaphor, at least he can understand it.

He thinks about it.

“You should consider that the melancholia is not the worst thing about you,” Jyn says to Cassian, on Fima’s first day of school.

“What’s the worst thing about me?”

Jyn rolls her eyes. “No, I’m not going anywhere near _that_ conversation. I only mean that you should consider your melancholia is forgivable. It is not the worst thing a child could have.”

“You want to give me another thing to be afraid of?” Cassian asks, laughing a little.

“I want you to consider that you don’t have to punish yourself for your melancholia. I want you to forgive yourself for it.”

He sighs, but Jyn isn’t done.

“Your mother never forgave herself for her sadness, and that’s why she never told you, right?”

“That’s my working theory,” Cassian mutters, because Serafima has been dead for three decades, and it’s impossible to know for sure.

“Don’t let your children believe you’re ashamed of your sadness.”

Cassian looks at her, and she can see the war behind his eyes, can see how hard he’s trying to do just that, because he doesn’t want Fima to see his shame.

“You’re speaking in a plural, there,” Cassian notes, rather than voicing any of that.

Jyn eyes him.

“I think you _want_ me to convince you,” she says.

“I do,” Cassian murmurs, and takes her hand, and they walk home.

He thinks about it.

Two months after Fima’s fifth birthday, well over a year since Fima first floated the idea of a sibling, and almost a year since Jyn said she wanted another child, Cassian turns to Jyn, as they’re washing dishes.

“I can’t picture my childhood without my siblings,” he says. “When my parents separated, it was Nerezza and Zeferino who stayed with me, who were always around. And then when my father died, and my mother worked two jobs and was rarely home, it was Nerezza and Zeferino who took care of me. My siblings _raised_ me.”

Jyn nods, wringing the towel in her hands, and she listens.

“Not that I’m saying you and I are going to separate,” Cassian continues. “Because we aren’t. And not that I’m saying that one of us is going to die, and leave the other to work two jobs, because we aren’t, and we have the Sernpidal inheritance, and--”

“What is your point, Cass?”

She really hates how he fixates on all the worst possible outcomes as if they’re actually likely.

She knows he can’t help it, that it’s mostly the melancholia warping his perceptions, but still.

Cassian looks out the window over the sink.

“My childhood was traumatic,” he murmurs. “I lost my parents. I lost my home. I lost friends. I fought battles, and I killed, and I built bombs, and I recruited children who died right in front of me. And the only reason I survived any of it was because of my sister and my brother. They kept me going, when my sadness was suffocating me. They kept me alive with their light.”

Nerezza was an inferno, and Zeferino was a chemical flame.

“I think Fima would be enough,” Cassian says. “For his sibling. I think he could help them.”

“And we’ll be there, too,” Jyn reminds him. “And they’ll need us.”

“If they’re gray like me they’ll have enough of the gray. They don’t need any more.”

“They’ll see they aren’t alone in the gray,” Jyn says, touching his arm. “They’ll see it’s possible to live with it, and to be happy with it. They’ll know it’s a forgivable thing. They’ll know they’re so loved, even with it.”

Cassian looks at her.

“You save my life, a lot,” he says. “For fifteen years now, you’ve saved my life, time and time again. Did you know that?”

Jyn swallows, suddenly feeling very emotional.

“I waited for you for a long time,” she says, softly. “I needed you to always exist, even when you weren’t with me. And I really need you to always _want_ to exist, because you, and me, we aren’t supposed to be here, so we have to fight to stay here.”

(They were never meant to survive.)

“What do we do,” Cassian says, and he lifts his hand and touches her cheek, “With our unlikely, and unexpected, survival?”

“Be happy,” Jyn says, automatically.

(Sometimes, the universe delivers a fantastically raw deal to two people who never did anything but lose and sacrifice.)

(Sometimes, the universe overcorrects itself.)

(And sometimes, it gives exactly what it ought to.)

“We get to be happy,” Cassian says, trying the words out, hesitantly, like they’re foreign.

And to someone melancholic, someone who has spent a lifetime wallowing in guilt, someone who forgets the good things; this is a foreign language indeed.

“Yeah, Cass,” Jyn says, and she lets herself smile, blinking against the bright gray light coming in through the kitchen window. “We do.”

Cassian looks at her, eyes darting around her face.

“Nerezza was six years older than me,” he muses. “And there was no one I loved more than her. I think… I think it’d be good for Fima, for his sibling to be six years younger than him.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

They stare at each other.

“Let’s have a girl this time,” he says, and Jyn laughs, loudly, and delightedly, and he smothers her laughter with a kiss.

 

* * *

 

It’s a girl.

Cassian tries to play it very cool when they get the news, but he has never made it a secret that he wanted a girl, that his favorite people have been women, that eight years before Fima was born and back when he and Jyn never really thought they’d have children, he told Jyn that if they did, he wanted a girl. And so when this actually happens, and the doctor tells them it’s going to be a girl, he very nearly cries right there.

Of course he loves Fima, more than anything.

He’s just going to love the girl just as much.

Jyn is just as thrilled, even though this second pregnancy is much harder than the first, and she doesn’t know if it’s because she’s older than she was with Fima, or if it’s because it’s a girl, and she’s carrying her differently.

It doesn’t really matter.

They have a more difficult time choosing a name.

Amaia immediately suggests _Amaia_ as a name, as she did for Fima, and Jyn is more inclined to seriously consider this suggestion, because at least they’re actually having a girl this time, but she thinks it’d be more confusing than anything else.

Jyn cautiously suggests _Taraja_ , because it’s a Mantooian name that means _hope,_ and she thinks that’s fitting, but Cassian quickly shoots this idea down, and it’s probably for the best.

He also refuses the name _Nerezza_ , because he still cannot speak about his beloved sister without sinking into the melancholia.

He suggests _Lyra_ , because they named Fima after his mother, so maybe they name their daughter after Jyn’s mother. But Jyn doesn’t want to risk her own sadness at the constant reminder, like Cassian worries he would with Nerezza.

Privately, they both consider _Shara_ , and privately they both decide against it, because it’s a name that belongs to Poe Dameron.

The difficult thing about running an orphanage and having a baby is that you’ve known an actual child with most of the names you consider, and this adds baggage to a name that would otherwise be a blank slate, and unassuming.

And then Fima, who was the first to want the girl, suggests they name her Jyn.

Fima is six years old, and there is no one he loves more than his mother.

Jyn thinks this idea, naming her daughter after her, is ridiculous.

Cassian, who was named after his mother, thinks it’s a perfect idea.

But he does think Jyn has a point, in that his wife and daughter sharing the same exact name would be a little strange, and definitely confusing.

“I wonder if that’s why my parents didn’t name Nerezza after my mother,” he says to Jyn one day, near the end of her pregnancy, when she’s so exhausted and perpetually achy that she rarely leaves the house, and so Cassian brings all her work from the orphanage home to her. “Maybe that’s why I ended up with my mother’s name.”

“They skipped Zeferino, too,” Jyn comments. “Wonder what it was about you that made them go, _‘Yes. Cassian.’_ And not _Cassiano,_ which still kind of sounds like a boy’s name, even with that _o_ at the end.”

Cassian stills in the act of handing Jyn a datapad detailing upcoming mandatory vaccinations.

“Jyn Erso,” he murmurs. “You’re a genius.”

“Uh huh.” Jyn pauses, and looks up. “Wait, why?”

“I know what to name our daughter.”

 

* * *

 

The girl is born exactly at midnight.

Fima had been born in the middle of a particularly violent Festian snowstorm in the early hours of the morning, but the girl is born at midnight, on a clear night, when you can actually see the stars over Fulcra, when the moon is more than just a sliver in the sky, but something anchoring, something to point out.

Something to aspire to be.

The girl is passed into Jyn’s arms, and like her brother, she’s got her father’s eyes.

She might have his melancholy, too.

And she might have her mother’s light.

Too.

These things are not mutually exclusive.

Some of the most melancholic people are the brightest. They have to be, to exist in the gray. They have to light their own path, with their own glow.

“I’m your mother,” Jyn tells the girl, who is red and teary and totally bewildered.

Fima stands next to the bed, and peers at the girl, and he is, for once, speechless.

Cassian touches the girl’s head, and the smile he bestows on her is blinding, because here is his daughter, named for her mother, whose brightness is something Cassian has long loved.

The girl blinks at him, and Jyn grins, and Cassian takes her hand.

“Hello, Ersa.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It kind of got preachy there at the end, but I have a lot of Strong Feelings about mental illness and living with it, so. Cassian's fear that his children would inherit his mental illness is also my fear; it was nice to try to work through that with this story. (But Cassian also really, really, wanted to be convinced that it was all okay.)
> 
> Also, I have written some 450,000 words arguing that this gray person that is Cassian Andor is forgivable. That he's done truly horrible things, but he is not irredeemable. The Nonsense was a kind of love letter.
> 
> If you've read SHARE WITH ME THE SUN: Ersa has the melancholia. She has the gene. She sees people as bright, like Cassian does, and she's an insomniac, and she gets up early. When Cassian tells her he's scared of the horrible things that might happen to her, he means he's scared something will happen that will set off her melancholia. He does not tell her about the melancholia, though; she's six years old. He will tell her when she's older, and she'll understand, and she'll forgive him for it. Because while Ersa and Cassian are a lot alike, she's also Jyn's daughter. She forgives more easily than Cassian does.
> 
> The destruction of the Weapons Research Facility on Fest was an Old EU event. Sources vary regarding the time period; 0 or 1 ABY; either way, Cassian Andor does not live to see it. This event occurs in the Afterword of GRAY AREAS, because Rogue Squadron destroying this place that haunted Cassian's childhood and adult life was just too perfect to ignore. Talk about a legacy. It was honestly a great feeling to write him surviving to see it in this story.
> 
> The Imperial Remnant was an Old EU thing. Sapan is an original character who appears in AMOR FATI. Italicized passages in parenthesis from GRAY AREAS (the last moments on Scarif, namely) and AMOR FATI.
> 
> This story was a sequel of/timestamp for AMOR FATI, and the Epilogue fills in the blanks of this last chapter, though this chapter goes to Ersa's birth, and AMOR FATI ends with Ersa unnamed and on the way.
> 
> This story was suggested by Callioope, who has been very kind and generous about the Nonsense. It was nice to write a story I knew was actually wanted, as opposed to, like, the rest of the Nonsense. Next for me is the Ethan Bain story asked for by both VaderCat and Smoke2014. I cannot believe you guys want it, but you both seem to be very interested, so: okay!
> 
> Please drop a line if you liked the story (and if you read this story without reading AMOR FATI; did it make sense??? at all???). 
> 
> I am also on tumblr; theputterer there too.


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